‘Shaking my head’

SMH. It’s the latest urban dictionary term, meaning “shaking my head.” And I’ve been doing it a lot lately.

The national news and even news here at Duke are full of stories that just make me shake my head. Where to even begin? Let’s start with the latest news and then work backwards.

First, there is the news about the delayed merger between the International House and the Multicultural Center. There has been a lot of student outrage, and justifiably so. This decision was made without any student input. The justification for the merger that the two organizations were redundant also seems tenuous at best, and it appears to be an ill-advised attempt to reduce the budget. What is particularly disturbing to me is the termination of MCC Director Julian Sanchez and Staff Assistant Juanita Johnson, especially because the layoffs weren’t announced until last week. SMH.

Next is the Oprah interview of Sarah Palin, which happily coincides with the release of her autobiography, “Going Rogue: The American Life.” No doubt this should be an entertaining and enlightening read. (I hope you can hear the sarcasm dripping from my voice.) But that is not why I’m shaking my head.

No, I’m shaking my head because in a futile attempt to justify her poor performance in her Katie Couric interview, Palin claims in her book that she did the interview because she began to “feel sorry” for Couric. She claims that Couric was “badgering” and had a “partisan agenda.” Anyone who has watched the interview knows this is far from the truth and that Palin is not exactly well-known for her intelligent comments. When asked about her foreign policy experience, Palin referred to Alaska’s proximity to Russia and Canada and readily agreed when Couric said that this “enhanced her foreign policy credentials.” Later when Couric asked her what newspapers she read, Palin intelligently responded that she reads all of them. I could go on, but this is not an article about Sarah Palin.

But dare I even mention the economy and the unemployment rate, which has reached 10.2 percent as of October, according to the U.S. Labor Department. And economists believe that the unemployment rate could surpass 11 percent and actually reach the level of 12 to 13 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. All we can wonder is when will it all end? In the mean time I can only SMH.

But a particularly good example of ridiculous news stories was the Balloon Boy incident. CNN and other reputable news stories bemoaned the sad fate of the 6-year-old boy supposedly trapped in a hot air balloon. In reality, the child was really hidden in an attic and it quickly became apparent that this was just a family’s desperate attempt for attention. This same family had already appeared on ABC news’ “Wife Swap” and had unsuccessfully attempted to pitch a story about their family to the TLC network. It’s really terrible what a family will do get their five minutes of fame. SMH.

Back to politics, Democrats proposed an amendment that passed in March that ended the D.C. Voucher Program in 2010. This program allowed 1,700 students to receive up to $7,500 to attend local private schools in the D.C. area. Two of the participants even attended the Sidwell Friends School, the same school that Malia and Sasha Obama attend. There is some hope that the program might continue, but if it does not receive authorization from Congress and the D.C. City Council, hundreds of students face the prospect of returning to D.C’s public schools where there are plenty of problems, as I wrote about in a previous column. SMH.