Explain Yourself ...

Click Changes

The change in the way we handle CLICK! coverage is set to start on Oct. 1. That's when we'll ask groups to begin taking their own photos and uploading them on to our website for CLICK! Yes, there's some cost savings here, but hopefully this move also will encourage more organizations to CLICK! events. In the past, we've had to turn down events because we didn't have a photographer available. Groups will be allowed to submit up to 10 photos. We hope to publish at least one and the rest will reside on the website. It's a change, so there's some trepidation, but in the end we hope this make CLICK! even more popular.

- Jean Marie Brown

What's 'grok'?

     A reader called, nearly beside himself because, as he explained, he's a crossword puzzle addict and had been stumped not by the New York Times puzzle in the YourLife section but by the much simpler puzzle in Classifieds. For shame!

     He got every word in the Tuesday puzzle except one, he said, and when he saw the solution, he scoffed. The word he couldn't get was "grok." "What is that? I don't think it's even a word or an acronym." I'd never heard the word, so my curiosity was piqued as well. Here's what I found for the reader:

     The definition of "grok," according to a Web site for IT professionals: "To grok (pronounced GRAHK) something is to understand something so well that it is fully absorbed into oneself. In Robert Heinlein's science-fiction novel of 1961, Stranger in a Strange Land, the word is Martian and literally means "to drink" but metaphorically means "to take it all in," to understand fully, or to "be at one with." Today, grok sometimes is used to include acceptance as well as comprehension - to "dig" or appreciate as well as to know. As one character from Heinlein's novel says: 'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man. In common usage, 'Do you grok?' seems close in meaning to 'Do you get it?'

     -- David House

    

"Murder your darlings"

     Shocking headline for this item, but it has to do with writing and nothing more.

     Actually, the quote is from some very old but still-excellent advice to writers from a scholar.

     The quote was fished out of the archives by Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute. He was addressing the headline issue that's driving the controversy over MoveOn.org's ad that was published Sept. 10 in The New York Times. The ad ran on the day that Gen. David Petraeus testified to Congress about the situation in Iraq and the outlook.

     The ad's headline read: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"

     Clark had some interesting things to say about that on Poynter's Web site:

     "I think what we have here is more than a failure to communicate. It's a seduction by creativity, an insincerity mated to hyperbole to meet the demands of a snarky and polarized political culture. The headline writer should have followed the advice, almost a century old now, of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who lectured his Cambridge students that 'style ... can never be ... extraneous ornament ... Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- whole-heartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.'

     "In other words: Stop showing off. Never permit clever language to distort your message."

     -- David House

Football heaven

Football fans are in hog heaven this time of year, and we don’t mean Arkansas. The popularity of football throughout Texas can be seen in the traffic we are generating not only to our Cowboys page on star-telegram.com, but also to our high school sports site, dfwVarsity.com. We had a successful launch of the site last season, and the audience continues to grow.

In addition to complete statistical information and individual team pages for almost 100 area high school teams, fans can interact on our message boards and by posting photos or video they have taken at games. And this year we’re really excited about the debut of High School Huddle, our weekly Online show that looks at the week that was in high school football and at the big games coming up this week.

If you haven’t taken a look yet, go to star-telegram.com and click on dfwVarsity, or just go straight to www.dfwVarsity.com. We believe we have not only some of the best high school football in the country here in North Texas, but also one of the best high school Web sites.

-- Ellen Alfano

Me and my Sting-Ray

In 1963, when I was 11 years old, the thing I wanted most in the world was to have one of the cool new Sting-Ray bikes that Schwinn introduced that year.  We had never seen anything like it -- banana seat, sissy bar, butterfly handlebar, back tire was a racing slick.  It came in only two colors, purple or lime green.

But my dad said I already had a perfectly good bike, so for more than 40 years my desire has gone unquenched --until today!

Photo Director Paul Moseley and I were talking with assistant city editor Lance Murray a few weeks ago, and somehow the topic of bikes came up and I told them about my boyhood dream.  Paul secretly got together a group of my friends at the paper and they all pitched in to buy me the bike I never had (click on the picture to see a larger version).

Our Fort Worth newsroom is two blocks long, so I think I'll keep it in my office for those long walks to the other side of the building ...

-- Jim Witt   

Dan Rather lawsuit

    The New York Times Web site reports:

     "Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a $70 million lawsuit this afternoon against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors.

     "Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005. He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed Guard broadcast and, in the process, “seriously damaged his reputation.” As plaintiffs, the suit names CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Sumner Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News.

     "In the suit, filed this afternoon in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House,” though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect. To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio, telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ”

     He also continues to take vehement issue with the appointment by CBS of Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush, as one of the two outside panelists given the job of reviewing how the disputed broadcast had been prepared.

     "In a statement CBS said, "These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit." For both Mr. Rather and CBS, the filing of the suit threatens to once again focus attention on one of the darker chapters in the history of the network and its storied news division, at a moment when it is already reeling."

      Unfortunately (or fortunately for those who want to trash the news media), the lawsuit will also bring fresh focus on journalists' credibility -- print as well as broadcast. The Rather issue, and the related Mary Mapes factor, comprise a huge brush that has smeared all news media's credibility and will continue to do so. Many readers make no distinction between broadcast and print media. I'll bet that journalists are in for another round of floggings by media-haters and the radio talk-show crowd who grind away daily at undermining the free press.

     -- David House

What we said

     Constitution Day brought this institutional view from the Star-Telegram:

Taking a beating

It is the job of every American to preserve and defend the U.S. Constitution in the form that the Founders envisioned.

The Constitution is one of the most revered secular documents in the United States. It is the mechanism that ensures Americans’ ability to openly worship from the pages of the sacred texts of their chosen faith.

     The English statesman Lord James Bryce commented in his classic work on liberty, The American Commonwealth:

     "The Constitution of 1789 deserves the veneration with which the Americans have been accustomed to regard it. ... After all deductions, it ranks above every other written constitution for the intrinsic excellence of its scheme, its adaptation to the circumstances of the people, the simplicity, brevity, and precision of its language, its judicious mixture of definiteness in principle with elasticity in details."

     The Founders performed a governing miracle when they crafted a constitution that did not represent a grant of power from monarchs who ruled by divine right, whose subjects had only the privileges that the throne saw fit to grant them. Rather, their constitution represented a grant of power by the people to the government that the Founders created.

     No national government had ever operated in that manner. Nor had any national government adopted the system of checks and balances and the separation of powers that the Framers developed.

     Yet it must be noted this Constitution Day, which marks the 220th anniversary of the signing of that document, that the venerated work has taken a beating throughout the years. The protections of citizen rights that at the time of its writing were heralded as revolutionary come under threat during troubling times.

     War can bring out the worst in the executive and legislative branches.

     "The letter and spirit of the law have been distorted beyond recognition, by presidential signing statements brazenly crafted to circumvent the will of the Congress, domestic spying programs that collect innocent Americans’ communications without a warrant, denials of foundational due process rights like habeas corpus, and assertions of the ‘state secrets’ privilege to prevent the courts from hearing valid claims against the government," wrote Corey Owens for the Constitution Project, a bipartisan committee of academics, lawyers and business leaders who work to make constitutional issues a part of political debate.

     As well-meaning as our elected leaders might be, it does little to promote their stated dedication to bringing democracy and liberty to the rest of the world if this nation’s citizens are experiencing the heavy hand of an arbitrary government.

     It is the job of every American — not just politicians and the military troops who have taken oaths to do so — to preserve and defend this magnificent and enduring document in the form that the Founders envisioned.

     It is during times of uncertainty, when our nation is being threatened, that the guarantees and protections are most needed.

     "The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it," said Albert Einstein. "Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."

READ IT FOR YOURSELF To read the U.S. Constitution and to learn more about its creation, go to www.archives.gov, the Web site of the National Archives.

     -- David House

Ignoring America's birthday?

     Monday marked Constitution Day and the 220th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. It's the nation's birthday, one reader said, and the Star-Telegram ignored it.

     Actually, the Star-Telegram marked the occasion with a lead editorial on the editorial page that reminded everyone that all Americans should preserve and defend the Constitution. The op-ed page led with a commentary that criticized elected officials for ignoring the powers granted to them by the Constitution. It would have been good to have seen a 1A look at Consitution-related issues such as warrantless spying, but perhaps we had enough government and politics on 1A by noting Democrats' plan to take a crack at tax code revisions and a headline that referred to the Page 6A look at retired judge Michael Mukasey, President Bush's pick to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.

     "Deborah" read all that and the op-ed commentary but wasn't satisfied. "It is dismaying to find, on Constitution Day, that "The Emmys" -- as serious news -- took precedent over the Constitution's "Taking a beating."

     "The "cult" of celebrity and fashion adoration has become insidious, and The Star-Telegram generally panders to the lowest common denominator with regard to this. This is not to say, however, that I want to live in a vacuum and don't enjoy the very humorous and boisterous slaps at celebrities that occur in the Friday "Blab!" section. The fluffy Your Life section of the paper is the appropriate place for "news" about celebrities and their other-world existence, foibles and follies.

     "How brave it would have been to have honored Constitution Day with, perhaps, a printing of the document rather than something of an "empty" (re: "A Call to Congress" - "There's something empty about Americans'..." by Joyce Appleby) reference to it, only to make a political point. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to state my opinion."

     The Star-Telegram is honored to cooperate with the Constitution in preserving Deborah's right to free speech.

     -- David House

Codes missing

     TV Star has discontinued publishing VCR+ codes, and few readers have noticed except those handful who have relied on the codes to help them program their VCRs while they're away from home.

     Jane Ramos Trimble, TV Star editor, says the codes were dropped from the grids "to make room for adding channel info for new providers -- Verizon and AT&T, for example. Thousands of our readers are or soon will be subscribing to those new services, and there are more providers coming in the next year, we’re told."

     The decision was made after reviewing how few viewers are still using VCRs," Jane said. "Most everyone has moved to DVD machines now. Several callers have told me it’s hard to find a new VCR machine."

     -- David House

Hispanic Heritage Month

     Hispanic Heritage Month begins this Saturday and runs through Oct. 15. The Star-Telegram's preparing its annual observance that will include daily coverage and will, as usual, draw complaints from readers who feel that such attention injects our society wtih divisiveness and ethnocentricity.

     One reader, William, called, angrily demanding to know "where all this Mexican stuff comes from anyway? Who decided to have a Mexican month?"

     The educational value of Hispanic Heritage Month is tailor-made for William, who evidently has missed many opportunities to learn that the Hispanic world is far larger than Mexico. He didn't answer a return call in which we would have talked about a federal report stating that in September 1968, "Congress authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to proclaim launch National Hispanic Heritage Week, which was observed during the week including Sept. 15 and Sept. 16.

     "The observance was expanded in 1988 (by President Reagan) to a monthlong celebration (Sept. 15 – Oct. 15). America celebrates the culture and traditions of U.S. residents who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Sept. 15 was chosen as the starting point for the celebration because it is the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on Sept. 16 and Sept. 18, respectively."

     With the rapid Hispanic population growth in Texas and the U.S., it's not only good but extremely important for non-Hispanics to understand the many Hispanic cultures found in our country. Their influence stands to grow markedly in politics, business, language and other aspects of daily life. The Star-Telegram will do its part to throw more light on all of that.

     -- David House