In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
When my Dad was in Israel, he was asked: "Isn't Kissinger a Jew?"
Dad replied: "No, he's a Nazi."
It's profound. Think it over.
The universe is the center of me.
[I think it was the same job that he knows he got only because of white skin privilege, though I'd have to ask to clarify. Note to self: too late now, %$#@&*!
It was a place with a big printing operation, his job was the lowest in the place to [move printed sheets].
He happened to notice that a word was mis-spelled, deodorant (maybe in the same way I just mis-spelled it, "deoderant"). He brought a sheet to his foreman who called the office and then yelled "stop the presses!"
The big boss wanted to know who spotted it.
Dad calling from West Virginia 2004 March 19, Friday, 4 pm (from 304-549-0257)
Dad collapsed while caring for Cassidy. Spent three days in the hospital.
Cassidy is in daycare now.
[Dad was working] over 50 hours a week.
Things were going really well...
Looking into ways to get back...
Dad was offered a good job in South Africa, he said. He was interested and then "What was I thinking?" he said. "If the situation in this country bothers me so..."
In Philadelphia, Dad answered a job ad, he was probably about 16, he said.
There was another boy there, an African-American, a real go-getter. [Who looked like he really expected to get the job.]
Coming out of the interview where Dad got the job, it came to him that the other boy was not going to get the job.
It haunts me to this day. This very moment it haunts me.
Naomi Klein at the annual conference for the American Sociological Association broadcast by Democracy Now:
We either value African life, understand a black life as equal to a white life and the poor as equally deserving as the wealthy – or we do not.
Read Mukoma Ngugi's article which makes clear the reasons radical change is needed for the people of Africa (even more than most of the world), and why this is the appropriate spot:
I am a writer. At least, I call myself a writer. Not because of any talent in writing, but because I'm a really bad talker.
More on NowPublic.
(Via http://justagwailo.com/2007/07/31/7794 "There's only two types of journalism: good journalism and bad journalism")
Scott Karp's "It’s Not Citizen Journalism Or Crowdsourcing - It’s Just Journalism"
http://publishing2.com/2007/07/30/its-not-citizen-journalism-or-crowdsou...
I don't care about the terms so much, but I am very concerned with defining journalism as process and standards (which everyone has to talk about more) and not as a profession.