Saturday, November 21, 2009
Editorial: Short takes
Quick views on some of the week's news.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
America's best collegiate reporter
Hokies who weeks ago had to abandon hopes of a championship on the gridiron this year can find other Virginia Tech champions to cheer. All they need to do is pick up a copy of The Collegiate Times to find Caleb Fleming, who has been named the top collegiate reporter in the nation by the Associated Collegiate Press.
It is a fantastic achievement. When a sports team wins a championship, it beats out only a fraction of the nation's institutions of higher education that fall in the same NCAA division. And among those, each has only one football team, for example.
Fleming, a junior from Warrenton majoring in economics, competed against students from four-year schools, no matter their size. Most schools have some form of student news operation with multiple reporters eligible for the competition. The field was therefore wide and deep.
Fleming beat them all, topping second- and third-place finishers from Harvard and Yale. His reporting about a Virginia Tech graduate student who disappeared a decade ago and remains missing, about athletic suspensions and about a murder on campus nearly a year ago all drew praise from judges.
Congratulations to the Hokies' newest champion.
Welcome to Roanoke, Sarah Palin
Whether one thinks Sarah Palin should be the next president or should bury her political career in a convenient Alaska snow bank, there is no denying the honor of having her visit Roanoke tomorrow.
Southwest Virginia does not typically wind up on the national political circuit, especially in an off year. It reflects well on our region's hospitality that the former vice presidential candidate and governor of Seward's Icebox is back. She must truly have enjoyed her campaign stop here little more than a year ago.
We hope she enjoys her visit tomorrow, too, and carves out a few minutes from signing books to enjoy a glass of sweet tea and take in a few of the sights the Roanoke Valley has to offer.
One of Santa's helpers is a registered sex offender
In 1897, the New York Sun newspaper printed an editorial response to a letter from a young reader. "Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age," wrote Francis Pharcellus Church in what has become perhaps the most famous editorial of all time: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
We wonder what he might write today as grown-ups have been affected by the fears of a fearful age. The U.S. Postal Service this week announced Santa will no longer return mail from the North Pole.
For more than 50 years, the Postal Service assembled volunteers to answer letters to Santa from young people. The return letters all bore a stamp from the North Pole, Alaska, post office.
Then, last year, Postal Service workers discovered a registered sex offender among the volunteers. The person never wrote a letter to a child, but the damage was done, the risk exposed. The program is no more.
We cannot help but mourn the passing of one of the federal government's purest programs. It existed only to make America's children laugh and squeal with excitement. It is the prudent choice, of course, but a sad commentary on a fearful age.
