Columns

While the world goes crazy all around us—drugs and killings and wars and poverty—it’s nice to know academic professionals are there to keep us safe from eyebrow tweezers and nail clippers.

Catch the sarcasm yet?

I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that another school district has used the “Safe School Act,” as a reason to suspend and expel a perfectly well behaved, high-achieving student.

The new Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office South Substation hadn’t even opened yet when Publishers Clearing House showed up at its door.

It’s proof that pigs fly and something had frozen over in mid May (consider this week’s unusually low temperatures).

But what it really demonstrates is the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol Elite Team actually does exist.

Oh, sure, I and 200 million other Americans had been skeptical for the past 42 years, ever since the first Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes launched in 1967.

People my age and older like to talk about the “good old days” before bike helmets, safe playgrounds and after-school activities when kids were free to run wild in the neighborhood, knock their noggins on asphalt and skin their knees with abandon.

I’ve been known to do that before, but even I have to admit, now that I’m a mom of an energetic 6-year-old, that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The literati, the glitterati and the Twitterati invaded our great nation’s capital last week for one of the most exclusive events on the social calendar, The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

Once heralded as the “it” event for Washington’s media elite, this year’s event, which now spans several days, lunches, brunches, dinners, parties and meetings, was a melding of journalists, celebrities, professional athletes—most of whom want you to know what they’re doing in 140 characters of less.