whether times are good or bad
Aug. 15th, 2005 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aruanMike forwarded an e-mail this morning about a local business owner requesting a news story after his trial concluded recently for allegedly selling stolen goods, something the Alligator covered when it was news... in 1998. When none of us were in college, much less with the paper. Regardless, he basically demanded equal coverage, as if we owed it to him. Mike said it was my call whether or not to assign a writer. Now, we owe nothing to nobody except the truth to our readers. We don't hold stories because they might hurt certain people's feelings or credibility, we don't serve interests, yet this man thinks he had the right to demand a story. I know news organizations are accused of not covering verdicts, and it's the tone of his letter more than anything that puts me off, but I honestly don't know which way to go on this. If it ends up as anything, it'll be a four-inch blurb in Briefs, but still. Being an editor is hard.
Today was otherwise spent delightfully (until dinner - see below.) Saw My Best Friend's Weddingfor the 2349763413th time, and I don't know how I feel about this, but the main character is a journalist named Jules. One of my other favorite movies growing up was Miami Rhapsody, in which Sarah Jessica Parker played a writer. It's not so much impressionable as it is identifying, but I don't know if romantically neurotic, career-centered sarcastic smoker is a terribly healthy thing to see in oneself. None of those things are fatal flaws, but when you don't return phone calls for three months because you convince yourself there's always something to be done for work (living with the boss doesn't help) and find yourself three weeks behind on everything else, that's when they all threaten to spiral out of control and become downright unhealthy.
To counter that, I will be at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
walkingshadow's front door tomorrow morning with coffee, the price of pre-noon admission to any college student's dwelling, after which we will head to Barnes&Noble to meet up with Staci, whose last phone call from the week before my interview for Managing Editor I only recently returned, and we will read dramatically from SAT vocabulary novels and eat something and have oogobs of fun. My day was otherwise whiled away with Order of the Phoenix rereading, Felicity, cooking with my mom and cuddling with my Yorkie. I have no words for how wonderful she makes me feel just by looking at me, the darling creature.
Dinner, however - our guest was a family friend who'd just found out his oldest son is gay. Now, nobody who's met this boy could walk away thinking anything else, but it nonetheless winded him to hear it. So now that the kid's finished college - he was an opera major at Cornell - he doesn't quite know what to do and wants to come home. But the father is afraid to let him live with his two younger children because... he's afraid his kids will think it's normal for a man to kiss another man.
Yeah. I could hardly contain myself.
He somehow thinks that if the kids see his son with another man, they'll get the idea that it's all right to greet friends like that - uh, yeah, if that's who you tell the kids the other man is. They're 10 and 14, plenty old enough to know the word boyfriend, and if that's what you say to them, then the only thing left to explain, if that's even necessary, is that sometimes, people of the same gender like each other. And that is normal, a concept that still eluded both him and my stepfather when we adjourned the table.
[sigh] I'm dealing with a not terribly savvy adult - smart in his business, yes, but not up on the culture around him. He's all, "there weren't homosexuals before, like in ancient Greece," a sentence I naturally did not let him finish. Now, my stepfather about had his third heart attack when I said "Greek men fucked each other in the ass all the time," but I made my point more eloquently after that, one I'm sure I need not repeat here. Genetics and just because it's repressed doesn't mean it doesn't exist and sexuality by six years old, etc. And yet, he's hung up on what he could've done, how he can't explain any of this to his kids, but he still loves his son just the same. I'm trying to talk to him, but it's just such a non-issue with me, the only thing I'd be doing is asking if he would come shopping with me sometime, or some other ice-breaking cliche we'd all laugh at and hug and continue just the same.
Today was otherwise spent delightfully (until dinner - see below.) Saw My Best Friend's Weddingfor the 2349763413th time, and I don't know how I feel about this, but the main character is a journalist named Jules. One of my other favorite movies growing up was Miami Rhapsody, in which Sarah Jessica Parker played a writer. It's not so much impressionable as it is identifying, but I don't know if romantically neurotic, career-centered sarcastic smoker is a terribly healthy thing to see in oneself. None of those things are fatal flaws, but when you don't return phone calls for three months because you convince yourself there's always something to be done for work (living with the boss doesn't help) and find yourself three weeks behind on everything else, that's when they all threaten to spiral out of control and become downright unhealthy.
To counter that, I will be at
walkingshadow's front door tomorrow morning with coffee, the price of pre-noon admission to any college student's dwelling, after which we will head to Barnes&Noble to meet up with Staci, whose last phone call from the week before my interview for Managing Editor I only recently returned, and we will read dramatically from SAT vocabulary novels and eat something and have oogobs of fun. My day was otherwise whiled away with Order of the Phoenix rereading, Felicity, cooking with my mom and cuddling with my Yorkie. I have no words for how wonderful she makes me feel just by looking at me, the darling creature.Dinner, however - our guest was a family friend who'd just found out his oldest son is gay. Now, nobody who's met this boy could walk away thinking anything else, but it nonetheless winded him to hear it. So now that the kid's finished college - he was an opera major at Cornell - he doesn't quite know what to do and wants to come home. But the father is afraid to let him live with his two younger children because... he's afraid his kids will think it's normal for a man to kiss another man.
Yeah. I could hardly contain myself.
He somehow thinks that if the kids see his son with another man, they'll get the idea that it's all right to greet friends like that - uh, yeah, if that's who you tell the kids the other man is. They're 10 and 14, plenty old enough to know the word boyfriend, and if that's what you say to them, then the only thing left to explain, if that's even necessary, is that sometimes, people of the same gender like each other. And that is normal, a concept that still eluded both him and my stepfather when we adjourned the table.
[sigh] I'm dealing with a not terribly savvy adult - smart in his business, yes, but not up on the culture around him. He's all, "there weren't homosexuals before, like in ancient Greece," a sentence I naturally did not let him finish. Now, my stepfather about had his third heart attack when I said "Greek men fucked each other in the ass all the time," but I made my point more eloquently after that, one I'm sure I need not repeat here. Genetics and just because it's repressed doesn't mean it doesn't exist and sexuality by six years old, etc. And yet, he's hung up on what he could've done, how he can't explain any of this to his kids, but he still loves his son just the same. I'm trying to talk to him, but it's just such a non-issue with me, the only thing I'd be doing is asking if he would come shopping with me sometime, or some other ice-breaking cliche we'd all laugh at and hug and continue just the same.
