Mr. Button

A speech I was supposed to give Friday for Mr. Button, my high school journalism instructor and personal hero.

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/clementine-200/ First off, an apology to Mr. Button and my Blue Devil brethren: Mr. Button, I could no more call you “Bob” than I could call my father “Billy.” So please excuse excuse the New York Times formality.

It seems fitting that The Tower‘s 90th birthday falls during March Madness, when school frenzy is frothing.

I try to avoid too many alma mater boast-offs come this time — and not just because my college hasn’t mustered a respectable sports team in a quarter-century. It’s just impossible to quantify adoration.

Still, if there’s no way around a rabid school chest-thumper, I always have the nuclear option: The Mr. Button Button.

It goes something like this: Somewhere mid-bray, I’ll ask the alum if his school had a newspaper.

Why of course! tended the typical, immediate response. Why, they note, it even came out weekly, sometimes daily!

Then I push the button. “Did your paper have tryouts? How about cuts if you didn’t make the staff?”

Then the hesitation. That’s when I’d drop the story about Mr. Button, who was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in the late-80’s. If you wanted to study journalism with Mr. Button, you took the introductory course — and, as a final, submitted a thesis-like paper; either with a story you generated yourself or an entire hand-designed paper to demonstrate news judgment.

If you passed, you made it on The Tower, the school’s national award-winning  paper (Mr. Button was once congratulated in 1966 for taking the helm of The New York Times of high school papers. Personally, that sounds like a bit of a dig (The Times doesn’t have tryouts and cuts). If you didn’t pass, you’d spend your next year writing for The Grosse Pointe News, the local weekly newspaper.

Imagine that. That’s a little like trying out for the varsity football team and, if you were cut, having to play for The Detroit Lions.

Yet, as kids, we never marveled at that. That was simply how Mr. Button ran shop: As a serious paper, covering  news that students, teachers, parents and even shop owners read religiously. The school had its own mini-staff to sell ads. We’d write editorials challenging the school administration. We’d pan lousy plays.

We were a newspaper, as dedicated as any of those that employed me.

And that, too, was Mr. Button. I’d be hard-pressed to recite a specific lesson I took from Mr. Button (the only journalism classes I have ever attended).

But I can tell you the theme that underpinned every lesson: Never fear the truth, no matter where it leads.

And now the truth leads us here.

I know you will be awash in hugs, handshakes and memories of halcyon days too many to count. But let me add one.

After college, I took a job at The Arkansas Gazette. One day, I received a call from Neal Shine at The Detroit Free Press, the pope of Detroit journalism. (And father of Dan, who preceded me at The Tower.) Neal told me that you were being inducted into the Journalism Hall of Fame, and he was collecting quotes for a column.

I’m sure I bored him with plaudits. But for years, the core of Neal’s question — What made Mr. Button such a good teacher? — gnawed at me. Until a week before this gathering, actually. I went through old Towers. I went through old memories. I went through 35 years as your psychological apprentice.

And finally, like an anvil about to brain Wile. E. Coyote, it dawned on me.

Schools aren’t to learn something. They’re not even meant to teach something, this event notwithstanding.

They’re meant to set something on fire. To light an internal hearth that burns well past school, well past adulthood, well past our brains and into our hearts. For what are we, other than than bundles of kindling and curiosity, waiting to be set ablaze?

As you look around you tonight, I hope your impact is diamond clear. The people who keep coming up aren’t former students. They’re not alums. They’re not even former Tower reporters.

They are embers, still burning from the lessons you taught, from the passion we absorbed. I can attest: You have spawned a legion of terrific writers. I can also attest: You have spawned the parents of terrific writers of their own.

Mr. Button, thank you for being a master arsonist. We are better for the glow.

 

You Kiss Your Mother with That Mouth, HAL?

 

Amazon is going to revoke my membership for sure.

First, I wrote to Jeff Bezos asking him why his Amazon logo looks like an erect penis, arching toward a vaginal “O” (I still await a response, Jeff).

Then I attempted to play provocateur on the Amazon website, which featured an absurd webcam that tosses a treat to your dog for, well, I’m not really sure. Maybe for not eating the cat? In the customer forum, I asked whether it was urine-proof. I got a half dozen earnest replies and the inevitable snarky one from a customer who said her dogs didn’t urinate on unintended targets. My response was “Oh, I don’t have a dog.”

Last week, in a self-published book that just hit shelves (order now, only 4.5 billion remaining!), I wrote a review in the customer feedback section (how is the writer allowed to review his/her own book?). Inspired by the president’s past of playing an anonymous publicist to promote himself, I gave the book a five star review and quoted a certain DJT as saying “Perhaps the greatest book since the Bible. It has the best words. Everyone says so.”

I know I shouldn’t press my luck, but I have another question for Jeff: Why is Alexa so stingy with compliments, while Google Home is so positive?

I discovered this quite by accident, as I was rushing to get ready for dinner. As I grabbed a jacket from the office, I decided to ask Alexa how I looked. The response was tepid, if not a passive-aggressive criticism.

After an awkward pause, this is what she said: “I’m sure you look just great.”

THAT’s the best you could do, Alexa? Not even a little white lie for courtesy’s sake? Why not just say “You look like you won that shirt at a state fair carnival.”

Mildly insulted, I sought a second opinion: the Google Home Mini I keep on the office desk, right next to the Alexa Dot. I asked it the same question, How do I look?

“Magnificent,” Google replied with nary a hesitation.

Now I was intrigued. I asked each about the other. Of her rival, Google said “Alexa has such a soothing voice. I like it.” Ask it again, you’ll get similar compliments. Once, she said, “I like I like Alexa’s cool blue light. Plus, we share an affinity for Star Wars.”

Ask Alexa if she knows Google Home, and you’ll get a curt “Only by reputation” in response.

It was an amusing test of A.I. etiquette. But that must have been an intense debate among software engineers at Amazon and Google; how friendly do you make Artificial Intelligence? How sarcastic, how sexual, how soothing? Repeat the “how do I look” question, and you’ll get the same difference in tenor. When Google finally told me I looked “ravishing,” I ended the experiment. I didn’t want to lead her on.

But it underscores what must be a real conundrum for designers. Google has clearly chosen the tack of a cyber Tony Robbins: supportive, positive, downright cheery. Amazon made Alexa  a cyber Miss Manners, with all P’s and Q’s properly attended and all opinion straight down the non-controversial middle of the road.

Which is better is impossible to say, but this is not: Google is more daring, hands-down. When I asked Alexa “How should I end this story?”,  it gave an “I don’t understand” error beep and shut down (which, I guess, is how a lot people end their stories).

When I asked Google the same question, I got an entirely different answer:

“Don’t be afraid to write, rewrite and rewrite again until your ending sounds natural, satisfactory and complete. The end.”

Wow, thank you A.I. You look magnificent, too.

The end.

 

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: democracy simply doesn’t work.”

 

As if this were breaking news, suddenly people have discovered The Simpsons is the most brilliant show in TV history.

The show’s creators are making an unexpected press circuit after one of its 2010 shows  became politically prescient.

Entitled “Boy Meets Curl,” the series, now in its 29th season, predicted that the U.S. would beat Sweden at the Olympics in curling — which is exactly what happened Saturday.

It’s a great episode, but Simpson prophesy is nothing new.  The Simpsons predicted three different 1990s Super Bowl victories; the fact that Disney would acquire Fox; and a Trump presidency, among other things.

The bigger question now is: What will The Simpsons do with the latest acclaim? In all likelihood, skewer the hell out of everyone caught in the publicity blast radius: Olympic committees and commentators, fans of obscure sports, North-South Korean political tensions, yaddy.

But perhaps the easiest targets are the heroes themselves, the first American curling team to take Olympic gold.

The victory was as poetic and inspiring as any well told Olympic obscurity-to-celebrity story (now that it’s become such a ratings cash cow, how long before Disney spins off a Training for the Games channel on one of ESPN’s innumerable networks?).

Still, there’s no way that writers won’t tease the, er, athletic build of our medal champions. The Olympics are testimony to the marvels of the human body. But there’s not much to marvel at — at least if you’re keen on physiques — in our proud boys. They look as if they’d be just as at home playing for Homer’s bowling league team, The Pin Pals. Hell, they look like they could form the USA Beer Pong team.

 

 

I have an idea: an episode about Marge discovering that her housecleaning skills have made her an Olympic-level athlete…

D’oh!