Kanye West

"I am to music as Michael Jordan is to basketball," said hip hop artist Kanye West to the Associated Press.  The music producer claims he will be the voice of this generation.  This is absurd.  Sure West has great music that I personally listen to on a regular basis, but there is no need to be so obnoxious and make such petty remarks.  First of all, Michael Jordan is the most popular basketball player to have ever played on the planet.  Kanye West, however, is not the most famous musician to have ever lived.  There is no comparison.  In my opinion, the reason music is created is to express people's views on world issues and their inner feelings.  West is entitled to these rights as well.  However, he does not have the right to say that his opinions and views are those of our generation.  We are the sons and daughters of the "baby boomers" and one man cannot possibly represent our diverse lifestyles.  Yes it is a good promotional idea to get his name out, but West has made arrogant and ignorant claims like this in the past, even going as far as calling President George W. Bush racist.  Musicians like Kanye West need to quit trying to go beyond their limits.  His music is great and he is a talented artist.  However, he and others like him should stick to what they do best and stop irritating their fans and the rest of the public.  

Obama speech

On October 30, 2008 Presidential Candidate Barack came to the campus of the University of Missouri Columbia in an attempt to gain more of the younger adult votes to help him win over the state of Missouri. I was able to go to his speech and there were many things that shocked me and that i was really interested in. One of which is to what extent the country goes to to protect someone of Barack's nature. There were several security officers and members of the secret service that were on top of buildings and other random objects to better help protect Obama. I have never in my life seen so many of the same signs and banners all in a last ditch effort to help persuade our votes into Obama's favor. Some of my favorite parts were when Obama would slam on the fact that our ecomony is in the worst economic state that we have had since the depression and that that is directly related to the fact that we had a horrible republican president for the last eight years.
I was also interrested by the number of people that were not in support of Obama that still came. They would all stand there and downgrade him for the fact that they dont think his "share the wealth" policy is not going to work but forget all the other things one must look at to help determine who they would want for their President. Things like aortion and immigration and all they little things that in time will have a huge impact on our society.
Barack Obama got my vote and i am very excited to see where he takes our country in the next four years

Willy Mo

We have all seen that over the last three Missouri Tigers football games, our defense has made some good decisions and some bad decisions. William Moore is our free safety but in the two games we lost the coaches were playing him as a nickel linebacker making our coverage game weaker thus resulting in Oklahoma St. and Texas' stomping over us. In our last game against Colorado, William was back at his normal position thus not allowing the deep ball as much and providing a great rush defense which resulted in Colorado being held scoreless for the entire game. We should have never taken Willy Mo out of his natural position. Who knows, we might have even won those games keeping our hopes of a national championship alive. I guess we will never know.

Cubs Choke...Again

A few years ago, Steve Bartman was to blame for the Chicago Cubs' failure to make it to the World Series.  On a side note, Steve Bartman is highly regarded in my book.  Getting back to the point, the baseball players from North Chicago have no excuse this year.  They were simply outplayed by the Philadelphia Phillies, much to the delight of St. Louis Cardinal's fans I might add.  They were the hottest team in the National League throughout the year, and highly regarded as one of the teams favored to take the World Series Championship.  However, when it comes down to it, the Cubs do not have the extra push needed in October to win all the championship.  Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano, two of the "biggest bats" on the Cubs, hit for a combined 3-25 in their opening playoff series with the Phillies.  The result, a 3-game sweep.  97 wins over the course of six months were forgotten about in less than a week.  The most wins in the National League meant nothing when the Cubs' players could not even manage one against the Phillies.  This was the year the curse of Fred Merkle was to be broken.  The 100-year curse put on the Cubs in 1908 seemed like destiny.  On September 23, 2008, 100 years to the date after the curse, the Cubs fell to the New York Mets in the same city where the curse was placed upon them.  The then New York Giants Fred Merkle failed to step on second base to win the playoff game for the Giants on a game-winning hit when the Cubs second-baseman stepped on the bag for a force out, causing a tie.  Thus, it was destiny for the boys from Chicago to put their fans out of misery.  It was destiny, rolling over all of the opponents who usually held the upper hand against them.  However, they will have to suffer in woe and sorrow for at least another year as they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs of the year of "destiny", to the delight of the "haters" of Cub nation.

Sarah Davidson Discussion

Mrs. Sandy Davidson visited the Rollins Lounge on Tuesday to discuss the effects of politics on the media.  Davidson is a professor of journalism, communication and law at Mizzou.  Although the discussion was intended to discuss the effects of politics on the media, it turned out to be a discussion on the effects of the media on politics, as well as foreign affairs and the crisis involving the economy.  The obvious opening topic was the racial diversity in the presidential election, along with the gender difference.  Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is an African-American while Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska is the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party.  Each candidate would be the first African-American or woman in his or her respective offices.  She emphasized the importance of the college students' votes and how they could sway the election.  According to Davidson, journalists, including journalism students, are in an exciting time in history with the election, as well as the technological changes that are affecting foreign affairs between countries.  However, the economy crisis is not helping anyone.  The media is affecting the debate by using its opinions to get into the voters' heads to vote a certain way.  In a bigger picture, the media is attempting to sway the public to think the way it does in all major affairs.  For example, although Russia is still making it through the ranks to become a world power once again, the media has blown things out of proportion, as if to scare the American public.  It is once again proving that it has influence over the public, which was a major point brought up by Davidson.  She also addressed the fact that the media is placing a strong emphasis on the financial crisis in the US, which is appropriate.  Overall, the discussion was interesting, yet not as informative as I would have hoped.

Jim's drunkin night

This past week i have learned why one should not get "shit faced."
We all know our good friend Jim Root but we wont call him that, well call him "Holden Megroin." Last Thursday Holden went to a house party where he proceeded to have the time of his very young adult life, which also coincidentally almost ended that night. Man was that fun. It was only midnight when Holden Megroin was back at the dorm puking his everliving guts out. The scary thing is that Holden was in fact almost hospitalized for his so called "drinking binge." I guess when you take a piss in our own room on your door, is when you realize that you are gone. The only thing i regret about my friend doing this is that i was not there to witness him go through this most tramatic event in his life. however, i am glad that Jim, i mean Holden, is still here and that he gets to cheer on the Brewers in the playoffs.

Cardinals

Cardinals

Why do the Saint Louis Cardinals suck ass?
After winning the world series, the Cardinals have proceeded to become one of the worst team in the NL Central division. How do we go from greatness to disastrous in a matter of two years?
Maybe its the fact that our General Manager, John Mozeliak, wont make any off season trades that benefit the team. How do you expect us to keep up with the Cubs and Brewers and all the off/mid season trades and accusations they make that help boost them into the playoffs.
Another thing we need to improve on is our bullpen. How can one bullpen lead the league in games held as well as leading the league in blown saves. Jason Isringhausen is a joke. Every game he came into to close he not only gave up an average of one home run per every inning pitched, but the lead and the game to boot.
We have debt when it comes to fielders, but one of the most important positions is the starting pitchers, we do not have any. Our best pitcher, Kyle Lohse, signed for a one year contract and the General Manager has not come to him with a new contract offer so we might not get him back next year!!!!! What is up with that?
Maybe next year thing will be better for the Cardinals and we might actually make it to the playoffs, or who knows, even the world series. But until then, we'll just have to wait.

Art Holliday, a morning news anchor for the NBC station in St. Louis, visited the University of Missouri last week for the Centennial.  While visiting the campus, he stopped by the dorm Excellence where the residents of the fourth floor named their floor after Holliday, labeling it Holliday Hall.  Sitting in the lounge of his hall, he told of the story of his broadcasting career, beginning with freshman year in college up to today.  Although Holliday is one of the leading news anchors in the St. Louis area, he did not always want to be a man in front of the camera.  Originally attending the University of Arkansas, he had hopes of becoming a photographer with an emphasis of nature.  However, paying the out-of-state fees to attend the university added up, and they influenced him to return to his native Missouri, originally from Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis.  

Unknown to Holliday, he had stumbled into one of the top Journalism Schools in the world.  He began his television careers with one of the local news stations.  It was obvious the passion Holliday had for his job by the way he described his love for "racking up the hours" in front of the camera to develop as a better journalist.  One point Holliday emphasized in the interview was the fact that connections were one of the keys to his success in establishing his career in St. Louis.  Although he met several other students that went on to lead successful careers, including editorial jobs for The New York Times and USA Today, Holliday met two people who would turn out to be his close friends that would set him up with the only two jobs he needed to make his career a successful one.  The first friend, a couple years older than Holliday, was visiting Columbia and staying with him.  He mentioned that he had recently turned down a job in Oklahoma, and the position may still b open.  Hollday, with three weeks left in his schooling at Missouri, created a tape to send into the station almost immediately.  Two tapes later, Holliday had the job and moved to Oklahoma.  Shortly after, one of his close friends from Columbia told him of an opening in the sports section of NBC-St. Louis.  Eagerly taking the job, Holliday moved back to Webster Groves where he and his family reside today.  The only change he has made in the past 13 years was changing from a sports broadcaster to the lead morning news anchor.  

Another event taking place during the Centennial celebration was a forum about reshaping the future of sports, journalism and advocacy.  this forum featured ESPN Sportcenter anchor John Anderson, the Missouri Athletics director Mike Alden, representative from the Major League Baseball Players Association Phil Bradley, President of the NCAA Myles Brand, Vice President of sponsorship and employee communications at AT&T Jamie Butcher, ESPN writers TJ Quinn and Wright Thompson, along with an O'Melveny&Meyers LLP Lawyer, Sonja Steptoe.  At this forum they spoke about how sports have evolved over time, particularly in college sports.  Myles Brand seemed to somewhat attack the way ESPN covers college sports.  "You cover college football the exact same way you cover professional football," he said.  "You lose the part that the athletes are students competing against one another on college campuses."  He mentioned that the only sport that was well covered for college was softball, where he said ESPN showed several campuses and made it clear that they were students.  In speaking with John Anderson after the forum, it was discovered that he did not disagree with this argument.  He did however say that it was the entire commercialization of college sports, as we mentioned during the forum, that led to the belief that the coverage is too similar to professional sports coverage.  In the forum they spoke about how difficult it is with sponsorships and commercial deals becoming almost larger in college sports than professional sports to avoid turning college sports into a business much like professional sports are.

Also mentioned in the forum was how difficult it is to write for a major newspaper or website.  This is due to all of the social networking websites who provide thousands of rumors each day about college students, and because of the evolution of blogs into a major source for many of people's news.  The biggest problem is that anyone can write a blog.  Therefore, people could be reading false stories and not even be aware of it.  However, as Steptoe mentioned, many people are not very worried about reading true stories, but instead rumors and drama.

This forum was very interesting to hear both the media's side as well as the NCAA's side.  This was particularly interesting when talking about the commercialization of sports, but hearing the ESPN reporters talk about how they text players and look on their websites and Facebook acounts was very surprising.  Perhaps even more entertaining than that was seeing the president of the NCAA and the Missouri Athletic Director's reactions to these statements.  Speaking to the members of the forum after the fact was also very interesting because they were more personal and said how they really felt about the topics.  It was also really cool to meet writers for ESPN as well as an anchor of just about every reporter's dream job on Sportcenter in John Anderson.