Ruffles and Flourishes

Ruffles and Flourishes

Ruffles and Flourishes

Tears filled the eyes of Sara Tomlinson as she spoke to her niece, Jane, and her graduation class about the world they would face after closing the door on four years at John Paul Jones High School in Bondsville, MD.

On the one hand, tears of joy sprung from the aunt’s eyes because her brother’s daughter, the valedictorian of her class, would start her freshman year at Towson University in the fall to pursue a bachelor’s degree in communications and media studies.

Sara, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist for The Baltimore Sun, had tried to do everything she could to blaze a path of success and cultivate her niece’s interest in writing and public affairs. Thinking ahead, she beamed with a glowing satisfaction about her protege’s plans to follow in her footsteps.

Yet this pride mixed with sorrow in the aunt’s thoughts as she reflected on the negative state of the world and of what had become of the profession her niece would enter after completing her studies at Towson. This caused the negative drops of moisture to flow down her cheeks.

She rolled back in her memory to 57 years ago and her own high school graduation in 1966, while she passed along the benefit of five decades of experience.

“As with your world today, we also faced a time of turbulence and division in the United States, as the news centered on the Vietnam War and almost daily demonstrations in the streets of every major city.

“Confrontations sprouted up across the nation between those who opposed the war and those who supported United States intervention in the conflict. Yes, we had the terrible tragedy of the National Guard shooting of students at Kent State and the violence at Altamont. But we also had the Woodstock Festival, where thousands of young people came together for a free weekend rock festival on a farm in New York State.

“Many of the country’s news media vigorously opposed the war, but those with different points of view did not get completely drowned out.

“Politicians with vastly different points of view managed to eventually come together to get some things accomplished on items that everyone could pretty much agree on. After a vigorous amount of debate Congress did manage to pass the Civil Rights Act and Medicare,

“Even more than 20 years later Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan found some common ground on which to reach agreement on many issues, while Orrin Hatch often had Ted Kennedy as a tennis partner. Could what brings nasty and divisive discourse today could have benefitted from some of the ‘off-line’ discussions between these leaders?

“In the earlier years of the 21st century, even Ruth Bader Ginsberg often socialized outside the Court with Antonin Scalia. Would the points made in their informal talks have helped advance modern society?

“But even these hands across the aisle seem too far to bridge the gaps we see in more recent times.

“Then, as now, the country found itself deeply divided. In the present, it seems that the loudest voices on one side of any question are the only ones that are heard and amplified and few seek to calm down the storm of rhetoric on every horizon.

“Those who talk about democracy and the right of everyone to be heard are either shouted down or hauled away to foreign prison camps by those more guilty than the accused.

“Some media act as political mouthpieces rather than non-partisan reporters of all the news, while others are too timid to fully investigate all facets of that which is causing many separate worlds to collide.

“Why don’t the modern Edward R. Morrows, the Walter Cronkites and the William F. Buckleys rise up against what timidly passes for discourse in 2025 rather than falling in line with thoughts and conclusions imposed on them by those in power?

“Why don’t the local journalists who write coherently and completely about the issues that most directly affect the lives of everyday Americans speak with a stronger voice rather than allowing the corporate media moguls to silence them?

“Why does the public allow itself to continue on the chessboard of life as pawns, lumping into generalizations about the motives and intent of local and hometown media? This, while they permit national monolithic parrots to fan the flames of negative thought rather than fighting for the future of mass communications working in the best interest of every citizen?

“Why does seemingly innocent questioning on mundane, often strictly, local issues become inflamed into all-out political and cultural battles?

“Why are too many arguments settled by bullets from the guns of individual citizens, many raging with mental illness? Everyone, instead, should be armed with the ability to engage in full-out debate and compromise that works out to what the majority believe to be in the best interests of all.

“Why is the power of the purse so strong that those with the largest bank accounts can buy whatever outcome they want, even if it results in the most negative consequences for those most in need of uplifting in the majority of society?

“This legacy, Jane, will destroy your world unless you and your generation make a stubborn vow to stop it and act now. I hope the setbacks suffered and brought about by my generation and passed down to you, along with the natural common sense and the fair-mindedness I see in you and many in your generation. will guide your hands in turning this world around.

“Many from my time and those before us overcame much of the turbulence of our eras and reached the compromises necessary to settle into some semblance of positivity, but I believe you and those who follow you will take the lessons we learned and complete the work on many fronts that those who preceded us and marched with us left uncompleted.

“This is not an argument for uniformity or complacency, but rather a hope that, even in following the different paths you have chosen or have chosen you, will come together at a summit that will exceed your highest expectations for a future in which everyone will thrive.