Sioux City Journal devotes entire front page to bullying editorial

don't you dare minimize the greatness of doodah

 

One editorial does not make for a good front page. Give me some sidebars, some reaction, anything.

Would I have done it? Nah. It just wasn't my cup of team. It did seem too preachy.

Bullying has been around since the Stone Age. It ain't going anywhere. You either fight back (which in today's zero-tolerance schools, isn't an option anymore) or take it. Or move.

It's awful, but a law or two or three isn't going to solve it. Kids are cruel when they want to be. All of the laws and the caring and handwringing in the world isn't going to change that.

 

And some people proove the point about respecting others every day.

 

Clearly you didn't actually read the piece you're presuming to comment on. Where does it say anything about a new law?

 

The comment is offensive. It also does not back up your earlier point regarding the usage of the "N" word.

Even so, I'm trying to get a sense of where you hear these comments. Do you overhear them from a neighboring table at the corner bar? Are they spoken in the teachers' lounge? Are you attending KKK rallies?

Because, they're not the kinds of comments I hear at all, let alone with any kind of regularity.

 

I hear them at lunch counters and in conversation on the street here in upstate New York, and I see them regularly on Facebook and in newspaper comments.

We could also discuss Ted Nugent.

Bama: I will say I liked this one better than the all-text Harrisburg one.

But generally, I agree.

 

I read a lot of tut-tut-tutting here for what amounts to one front page, once a year, for a paper that's probably not done this before regarding a child's death, and a movie - which chronicles a kid <i>in the town</i> - on the same subject that opened two days before.

Good grief, people. Get over yourselves. Sidebars?

 

Agreed. The Journal has done an exceptional job of covering this since it's happened. The sidebars and reaction pieces have already been done.

 

I presumed the editorial was a culmination of what had preceded it.

 

The execution is what I'm arguing against, more than anything. It was a bad editorial. It took a stance against a straw man and wrote that stance poorly. Right there, in the first actual paragraph: ""By all accounts, Kenneth Wieshuhn was a kind-hearted, fun-loving teenage boy, always looking to make others smile." I'm sure he loved to laugh, too.

It's thin. It's only as long as it is because they wanted it to be the full page. It's only on the front page because someone had the idea planted from The Patriot-News or the Detroit Free Press or The Arizona Republic or some other paper that I can't recall off the top of my head that did this. It's a gimmick. Maybe that's fine. Maybe that helps sell newspapers.

 

What 'straw man?'