Saturday, March 31, 2018

Enough of Sister Jean

Surprisingly, I find my March Madness experience being dampened by an underdog.  Not an underdog that knocked my beloved Marquette out of the tournament.  (My Warrior-Eagles didn't even make the Big Dance this year).  Rather, it's eleven-seed Loyola-Chicago, an underdog I would normally cheer for if not for the media's constant and inane coverage of "Sister Jean."

Today, for example, the babbling Dick Vitale took the hype to a new level.  Of course there was the usual allusion to "the power of prayer," as if the woman who didn't even pick her own team, Loyola-Chicago, to get past the Sweet 16 somehow has the ear of a supreme being.  But Dick -- an annoying but knowledgeable college basketball analyst -- now says (hopefully jokingly) that he relies on her for "scouting reports" and even wants to cast his wife aside so he can "date" Sister Jean.  And of course, Dick declares that she'll be a "major factor in the game" tonight against Michigan.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Apology Nation

When, exactly, did we Americans become so wimpy, pathetic, and flat-out obsessed with demanding and issuing “apologies”?  I first wrote about this phenomenon more than five years ago in a blog post titled Speaking Freely.  Since then, I’ve noticed that the apology problem has become even worse — particularly at schools where the adults of tomorrow are supposedly being educated and/or trained.  In fact, apologies have been multiplying like rats and are now everywhere we look.