OPINION | BRENDA LOOPER: How weird! – Arkansas Online
OPINION
August 21, 2024 at 3:10 a.m.
by Brenda Looper
OK, 2024, you win. Each year since at least 2015, it seems, the outgoing year has basically said, yeah, you can’t top me for despair/confusion/misery/violence/hatred/etc., and every time the incoming year has said, “Hold my beer.”
Surely 2025 couldn’t possibly be worse/weirder than this year so far. (Annnd I probably just jinxed us all. Sorry.)
Let’s take a look at some of the oddity that has been 2024 (so far, not counting RFK Jr.’s brain worm and the bear in Central Park).
A former president was found guilty on 34 fraud counts in a Manhattan courtroom. Say what you will about the case (the weakest of his four indictments, brought by a prosecutor who campaigned on bringing Donald Trump to justice), but the state (not federal) case tagged Trump as an official felon. It also highlighted one of the things that irritates me most about politics: making everything political. It’s bad enough we have machinations for Supreme Court seats that shouldn’t happen (especially when it’s OK when the president is of your party but not when he or she is not). The justice system should be about justice, not politics (and don’t kid yourself that only one side uses “lawfare”); the sooner it gets back to that idea, the better.
Taylor Swift simultaneously threatened to take attention away from boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Super Bowl win, and launched probably about a million conspiracy theories, including that she would parachute in at halftime to endorse Joe Biden. Yeah, that didn’t happen. The conspiracy theories about her, though, continue apace. There’s something about a successful woman in her 30s (a billionaire with cats, no less) that seems to scare some people …
Speaking of powerful women, Caitlin Clark broke the all-time NCAA Division I scoring record, but wasn’t picked for the USA Olympic team, something she was fine with but many others weren’t. Even without her, the team managed an historic eighth straight gold, and she’ll likely be on the team next time around if she wants to be. For the first time in history, there was an equal number of male and female competitors in the Olympics, but women actually outnumbered men on Team USA. Fifty-seven percent of the total medals awarded to the USA in the Olympics were won by women such as Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Gabby Thomas, and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Of the 40 gold medals, 26 were won by women. Which probably has more than a few men grumbling.
Cue the vice presidential candidate who has seemingly been trying to alienate huge swaths of the electorate, with comments surfacing about “childless cat ladies,” post-menopausal women’s role in society, and others. Seems a bad strategy, especially considering that, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, “Women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980, with the turnout gap between women and men growing slightly larger with each successive presidential election.”
And then there were the things that were more goofy than weird.
Kamala Harris riled up a bunch of grammar nerds, first by being endorsed for president after Joe Biden ceased his re-election campaign, and then by picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Why? Apostrophes.
While most people agree that names ending in z take ‘s at the end (Cruz’s, Walz’s, Gitz’s, etc.), some still insist that names ending with z (or x) don’t need an s after the apostrophe (they do, so stop leaving it off). The bigger fight is over Harris’ or Harris’s. We follow Associated Press style in most things here, and names ending in s are no exception: They take only an apostrophe. Others, like The Washington Post and The New York Times (which also puts periods in acronyms like FBI, so let’s not even go there) and Benjamin Dreyer, the retired copy chief at Random House and author of “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style,” believe it should be Harris’s.
Which is right? Both are acceptable, so it’s up to you (and/or whatever publication you’re published in).
There was a reverse heist in February at the Pinakothek der Moderne Museum in Munich, Germany, when a museum employee snuck in and hung his own painting in the modern art section after hours. It wasn’t immediately taken down, but didn’t get the warmest reception, and the employee lost his job.
Max the Cat was awarded an honorary doctorate from Vermont State University for his friendliness, spending much of his time on campus befriending students rather than staying at his nearby home.
And Sesame Street’s Elmo inadvertently became a therapist on X/Twitter after posting a question asking people how they were doing, opening the floodgates for thousands to post their worries. Elmo, being the sweet and helpful monster he is, responded to as many people as possible in a kind fashion.
If the rest of the year has to be odd (Lord, I’m not looking forward to October and November), we would do well to emulate Elmo. Just be kind, please; it’ll go a long way.
Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Email her at blooper@adgnewsroom.com. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com.
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