Rejected

My article got rejected today. Apparently, I write really well, but the stuff that I write is really more for blogs than for newspapers. I guess all this blog writing has finally taken a negative effect on me. Nonetheless, I will fight the ever good fight to write like a true newspaper reporter and editorialist, while freeing my mind in these more introspective, self-reflection pieces. And so, who wins out? My blog readers. Here's an attempted editorial that fell on its face because it was in essence, not an editorial. Enjoy.

Uncertainties of a Novice Editorialist

I walk through this campus as if I’m some angry lone-ranger pre-teen, wearing a wife beater and listening to Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff," when in actuality, my heart beats to the rhythm of Celine Dion's “All by Myself," in dire need of acceptance. I hope that if I lather, rinse, and repeat pop culture references next to halfway profound thoughts, I might be able to find audiences who will respect this gift of writing, creating words of affirmation that become the Red Bull to my insecurities. So I run a microfilm in my mind with all the great editorials from the Times and the Wheel, imagining what topics I can tackle in order to tickle the fancies of liberals and expose a level of my brute sensitivity to women. Maybe I should start with a political piece that ends with an impractical solution, but enough big words and intelligent concepts that I plagiarized from Michelle Malkin and Jack Cafferty. Or maybe I can hit one of the Emory hot topics that need at least one editorial per semester: DUC food, the extinction of dating, or a lack of school pride.

But sometime between trying to please one mob and the next, I began to question why I only saw the same regurgitated topics from issue to issue. And after thorough soul searching of my own journalistic spirit, I am quickly learning that it is easier to write an opinionated article when I can already hear the response of approving loud claps and snaps reverberating off the walls from my classmates. Everyone knows that DUC food is no Fogo de Chao and everyone knows that Emory students are not painting our faces blue and gold for athletic games. Even with a political piece, I can expect half the student body to disagree with me, but more importantly, the other half to agree with me. But in that same journalistic spirit, I am quickly becoming dissatisfied with forfeiting the potential to write something meaningful so that I can be congratulated by explaining the obvious and the mundane.

I am going to muster enough courage and just say it. I'm afraid. Let me clarify, though, that I am a man of convictions that range from the superficial (I believe Ben Mckenzie in the The OC is a good-looking man) to the controversial (I believe that this dude, Jesus actually rose from the dead two thousand years ago). But it has somehow become uncool to believe what you're talking about? You know? At least that is like, what I've heard? I do not know what has happened to our conviction, but will you just join me in my uncertainty or like, whatever? Totally, right? We just may have become the most inarticulate generation in years, I think? Unless we are talking about the soup in the DUC. Or until we know that with Bush's approval ratings are down, we can yell "Bush sucks!" with more confidence than when we whisper "I love myself."

My deepest fear may be coming alive for this campus as I am beginning to hear the chorus of unsure voices looking over shoulders to see who is responding with an "Amen!" but in our fear, we sound like one monotone, raspy voice like a radio station that only features Creed, Nickelback, The Calling, and Staind. So I implore you and I beg you to jump off the proverbial bandwagon, no longer be stuck in the facebook boxes of "liberal" or "conservative.” Instead, I yearn to hear the harmonies of many self-assured voices that proclaim: we are one and we are many.

My mother and the civil rights movement taught me an important lesson: question authority. But after these scribbles in this article have taken me on a journey from a fear to what my editor thinks to a place of empowerment and confidence, I realized they were only partially correct. It was not, is not, and will never be enough to question authority. We must speak with it too!