kis·met \ˈkiz-ˌmet, -mət\ - noun; often capitalized
1. fate.
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"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language.
That may be the measure of our lives." - Toni Morrison

"Growing up Southern is a privilege, really. It's more than where you're born; it's an idea and state of mind that seems imparted at birth. It's more than loving fried chicken, sweet tea, football, and country music. It’s being hospitable, devoted to front porches, magnolias, moon pies, coca-cola... and each other. We don't become Southern - we're born that way." - Unknown

15 January 2010

make like a {good} journalist and check your facts

Tuesday in my Post-Modern American Literature {yikes, what a mouthful} class we were discussing the significance of the setting: post-WWII. In the text, one of the characters has a complete meltdown upon hearing the news of the bombings of Nagasake and Hiroshima. He's a bomb diffuser by trade, and the realization that there are bombs so powerful that no one, himself included, could have stopped them is too much for him to comprehend. In the human predicament of "fight or flight," he opted for the latter.

There is a woman in my class who is the I-need-to-justify-myself-every-day-by-spouting-off-my-knowledge types who loves to go off on tangents. While discussing the effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasake, this woman went off about the ethics of dropping the bombs on Japan. Her argument was that we should have dropped the bombs on Europe; specifically Germany instead of Japan. According to this woman, "Why didn't we drop the bombs on Germany? Why did we have to drop them on Japan?"

As I sat there listening to the woman yammer on so adamantly about something she clearly didn't know too much about, I couldn't take it anymore. I raised my hand and said something to the effect of, "The reason we didn't drop the bombs on Europe is because the European theater of the war was over by the time we dropped them on Japan. Hitler was dead; Germany had surrendered. V-E Day was in May. We didn't drop the bombs on Japan until August."

Moral of this tale: Don't get on a soapbox unless you actually know what you're talking about.

2 comments:

Candice said...

This post reminds me of a lot of my senior level English classes. By the time I got to the end of my degree and the number of students was under 10 per class, we always had one person that would get on their soapbox daily. SO annoying! I always thought they were just trying to get good letters of recommendation for their graduate degree, lol!

I feel your pain. What an idiot.

lotusgirl said...

It's annoying when they know everything except what they're talking about. They are everywhere. Especially in academia.