I feel like we’re really scraping bottom now, people.

I clicked on CNN.com this morning to discover that the second hyperlink under “Bin Laden News” is titled “Porn said to be found in compound.”

I’ve been teaching at the college level consistently since 2002.  Over the years, I’ve noticed a serious decline in my students’ writing.

Yes, I accept that spell check and grammar check functions have rendered us all idiots when it comes to the basics, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating.  This phenomenon manifests itself the most with the comma.  People do not know how to use them.  They either over use them, or they don’t use them at all.

I keep asking myself this question since the US media outlets began announcing that President Obama was preparing to make a special statement.  Ironically, I was watching Donald Trump start to rip Star Jones a new one on “Celebrity Apprentice” (which I never watch), and the first ticker break came through at the bottom of my television screen.  Then my boyfriend texted me saying that he was waiting for the President to speak before he went to bed.

It’s a been awhile since I posted here, as the month of April somehow got away from me.  This marks my attempt to get back on track.

Since the first rumblings of the “birthers,” I’ve been fascinated by how low people will go in order to undermine the strength of a particular candidate for the “highest office in the land.”  Of course, there are examples of dirt digging and mud slinging in every campaign process, but the fact that almost three years later the issue continues to re-surface makes me feel a bit like we’re on the playground at the jungle gym arguing over which girl is Sally’s best friend.

Last week I was talking with a colleague about a piece of writing that we needed to evaluate for inclusion in an upcoming project.  We both read the work and each had some reservations about it for different reasons.  My colleague works as a writing and empowerment facilitator as well as a life coach.  Her response to this particular piece of writing was something like this:

“If this person was in my empowerment workshop, I’d say, ‘You go, girl.’  If she was in my writing workshop, I’d say, ‘Hold on here.  We need to talk about this.’”