6. WHAT NEXT FOR YOU?
“What books are you going to write about now that Michigan won’t let you within a mile of any of their programs anymore? I mean, it’s not easy to piss off everybody.”
This, I loved. Not only did I find your questions intelligent, they were often quite funny. More power to you.
Well, first: Despite the sacrifices I mentioned in the first installment – time, money, and possibly professional opportunities — writing it was my decision, naturally, and I don’t regret it. Given my choices, trying to write an honest book is certainly more appealing to me than trying to keep everyone happy and produce a book I could never respect.
Plus, I had the chance to see a big-time program form the inside that no fan, and no reporter, has ever had – and probably never will again. If there was one great privilege that I hope every reader can share, it was getting to know these young man not as gladiators but as human beings – some of the best I’ve met. If you were proud of Michigan football before, I can tell you this: getting to know these guys can erase much of the cynicism we all feel for college football these days. They were, quite simply, the real thing.
None of that, unfortunately, solves the problem described above. Mr. Brandon and Mr. Carr, through various means and channels, have made their contempt for the book (and its author) plain enough. I have no idea what’s going to happen with my various ties to Michigan, including my teaching arrangement, but I’d probably be foolish to count on anything.
It’s almost impossible to write anything interesting without at least some cooperation and access, and I might find those in short supply under the Brandon regime. I will likely have to go “off the reservation,” if you will, to pursue future projects. And perhaps it’s time.
But I also believe this book would cost me a lot more if I were writing about Kentucky basketball under Eddie Sutton or, say, Ohio State football (as a convenient example). Those schools and fans generally don’t want the truth, and will attack anyone who attempts to deliver it – witness Mr. Herbstreit’s forced move to Tennessee. Michigan football fans are very demanding – they expect a first-class program on and off the field – but they also want the truth, and they can handle it.
I feel the same way. After all, I learned how to do all the things I needed to write this book – researching, writing and thinking critically – from world-class professors at the University of Michigan. But the most important principle Michigan taught me was the central importance of pursuing the truth without fear, wherever it leads.
For those who say this book will hurt Michigan, I can only respond: not the Michigan I know.
7. Does the idea of being a “Michigan man” emerge as tortured shibboleth in need of burial or does Bacon make the case that there is something valuable in it, something RR just really didn’t get?
This is why you have to love Michigan fans. What other school’s backers would inquire if their culture’s central concept emerges as a “tortured shibboleth in need of burial”? It was such fans, by the way, that made it easy for me to persuade our highbrow publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, that our readers would have no trouble getting through a 438-page book with no photos, nor digesting the word “crucible” in the subtitle. (Arthur Miller, after all, went to Michigan.) After my editor became addicted to the top websites devoted to Michigan football, and the reader commentary thereof, he readily agreed.
The term “Michigan Man” probably goes back to the day men arrived at Michigan. But it’s taken more than a few twists and turns since – and not always for the better.
Fielding Yost gave the term “Michigan Man” a boost when he started using it in his speeches. But the phrase really took off in 1989, of course, when Schembechler announced he was firing basketball coach Bill Frieder, on the eve of the NCAA basketball tournament, because Frieder had signed a secret deal to coach Arizona State the next season. This prompted Schembechler to bark: “A Michigan Man will coach Michigan!”
Pundits have wondered exactly what Bo meant, but I think it’s pretty simple: anybody coaching at Michigan better be completely committed to Michigan.
The phrase took on more weight four years ago, when a reporter asked brand-new head coach Rich Rodriguez if the Michigan coach had to be a Michigan Man. He joked, “Gosh, I hope not! They hired me!”
He was criticized for that – and not without some justification, in my opinion. The question was inevitable, and it exposed Rodriguez’s superficial knowledge of the program upon his arrival, and the athletic department’s failure to prepare its new coach for his mission.
From that point on, the phrase was used more often to beat somebody over the head – usually Rodriguez – than to underscore the values it’s supposed to represent, much the way extremists use “patriot” to castigate someone as un-American.
At the “Victors’ Rally” held in February 2010, Rodriguez wanted to show that he’d gotten the message. So, he closed his speech by saying, “I’m Rich Rodriguez, and I am a Michigan Man.” This time, he was criticized for being presumptuous.
Finally, with great humility, he told the crowd at his final speech at the Bust in December 2011, “I hope you realize, I truly want to be a Michigan Man.” But this time his critics said a true Michigan Man wouldn’t have to ask.
And thus, the silliness of the entire exercise had come full circle. The phrase had become so distorted, Michigan’s critics started using it as a mocking insult. Much like the word “classy,” it seemed, whoever uses it, probably isn’t.
Despite my temptation to chuck this overused and little understood phrase forever, I still think there’s something to it. Everyone knows the values it’s supposed to stand for: honor, sacrifice, pride in your team, and humility in yourself, all in one. But ultimately, to define it, I have to resort to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s description of pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
Pardon the comparison, but when it comes to the phrase, “Michigan Man,” I know it when I see it, too. They might be Big Men on Campus, but they don’t act like it – in college or afterward. The men I’ve been lucky enough to get to know – many as good friends — really do put their team and their school before themselves, and become the kind of adults you want to be your employee, your colleague, your boss, your neighbor, your brother-in-law. Not because they played football for Michigan, but because they represent its values. And they really are different than the players I’ve met from other schools.
I can cite too many men who fit this description, and too many examples of their conduct, simply to dismiss it.
Here’s a small one: a few years ago the football alums of Ohio State and Michigan were invited to an event in Columbus. The Buckeyes showed up wearing everything from sport coats to sweatshirts and jeans. But the Michigan alums arrived wearing coats and ties. No one told them what to wear. Bo had already passed away. But they simply knew, reflexively, if you represent Michigan, this is how you do it.
A bigger example: a few years after graduating, Scott Smykowski, a former backup under Schembechler, discovered he needed a bone marrow transplant, but his health care wasn’t going to cover all his expenses. That’s all Schembechler needed to hear to rally Michigan Men from coast to coast. And that’s all they needed to hear to raise $150,000 in just a few weeks – even though most of them never played with Smykowski or even met him. That’s what being a Michigan Man meant to them.
When I speak at Michigan events, I often end with a quote from arguably the first important Michigan Man, Fielding Yost. Near the end of his life, they held a big banquet for him called, “A Toast to Yost from Coast to Coast,” which was broadcast nationwide by NBC. After all the speakers had paid tribute, he got up in his eponymous Fieldhouse and said, “My heart is so full at this moment, I fear I could say little else. But do let me reiterate the Spirit of Michigan. It is based on a deathless loyalty to Michigan and all her ways. An enthusiasm that makes it second nature for Michigan Men to spread the gospel of their university to the world’s distant outposts. And a conviction that nowhere, is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours.”
It gets me every time. But what really gets me is the response from the people in the audience. None of them ever met Fielding Yost. Most of them weren’t born when he passed away in 1946. Most of their parents weren’t, either. And yet, when they hear these words, they nod involuntarily, the words resonating with something deep inside them, and they are often glassy-eyed when I finish the quote.
If you could stand on that podium and look out on those faces, you would not have to wonder if the idea of the Michigan Man is for real.
Despite the best efforts to kill it, it is still very much alive.
Like this story? Please feed the writer, and keep ’em coming!
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnubacon
“Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” is due for release October 25. It can be pre-ordered now.
Since folks have asked, I will give the first local book talk and signing at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 28. My book tour schedule has been updated, under Events, with more to come soon.
I really am looking forward to reading the book. Your answers to the questions have been fascinating, which certainly creates no surprise. The Yost quote story in answer #7 is superb. Uncle Dave
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
Abraham Lincoln
We are proud of you Coach B.
Griffen Hock
John-
This is my first posted comment on an internet Site associated with your “classy name”.
Just this morning I heard the Michigan Radio NPR broadcast of your well-meaning but deeply lame attempt at a definition of the term and core concept of someone being a ‘Michigan Man’.
It saddened me because you weren’t wrong, and your heart is in the right place. But all I could think at the end was “Ach du lieber, there goes another log of fuel onto the fire. This lame limp down the Lane of life, from one of Mamma Michigan’s champions, is going to meet a phi slamma jamma rejection by adversaries of the very concept he is advocating. One which I myself believe to be true. Ach, Mr. Bacon, leave definitional statements to Descartes, and stick to the day jobs.”
I’m venturing a comment here, even though your Comment System is scary. I just clicked on a direct Comments Link, which said “18 comments”… and my screen says that THIS will be comment #8 if posted.
I can only assume that the other 10 commenters languish in dungeons somewhere, having dared to criticize you. So I ask that you be patient, this is my first visit to the site although not my first visitation upon Mr. Bacon. Since I don’t know whether this comment will make it through, I’ll add the remainder of this comment upon success of this first part.
The core nuts and bolts of the alleged delusional state exhibited by Mr. Bacon, and so jeered at by those not-blinded by elitist self-notions, is his misunderstanding of how the pleasure centers of the brain, and especially the Reward Circuit, function.
Of course this is commonplace, and not inherently a fatal flaw in a person, but if one is seeking to emulate Descartes, and issue definitive statements about core existential definitions, at least one ought keep up with the research.
Simple fervor, extreme loyalty, compassionate bonding, yes, John, these are all basic human Goods. And by the way we’re designed, they are among the human activities which stimulate the Reward Circuit in the brain. If we make a mental link to such behaviors, through symbols, we get the same good feeling and rush of pleasure sense… but is it grounded? How we feel is not the ultimate determinant of that. Is describing oneself as ‘A Michigan Man’ just about “getting a rush”..?
As you emphasized, John, if there’s any Meaning to a phrase like ‘Patriotism’, it can’t be simple patriotism. Just being a good soldier and having fervor isn’t enough. Any phrase anywhere implying an Inner Circle (inclusion), and an external Outer Circle, has to rest on a valid ground for differentiation. Or it’s just an advertising jingle.
In conclusion of this first part, the perfect example and illustration of the above is that perfectly fine quotation from a speech by Fielding Yost. I invite you to listen again, word by word, with your ears un-stopped.
John, you spoke of how that speech “gets you”, and how you observed that wherever you went it also “got people” and gave them the warm and fuzzies. I’m sure that is true but it is also no evidence of anything beyond the pale of emotion. If you went travelling about, and came up to 1–2 year olds, and made cooing sounds at them and shuckled them under the chinny chin, they would go goo goo, and the response would be reasonably consistent among babes.
With an adult if you appeal to a cognitive function called “My Side Bias” (not my term, the one used in all the literature on How Not to be Duped), you can induce the same effect in the same hippocampus of the brain. Just larger. And with tailgating.
It’s why National Advertisers who don’t even know what cities an advert is appearing in have come-ons that talk about Your Home Team and aint nothing like it, and how Rush Limbaugh has funded his vast plantations, and why politicians always know to wave a Tri-Color flag in our face as they pick our pockets.
This innate tropism in our cognitive function is what anyone who wishes to be a moderator or an arbitrator or any kind of adjudicator has to carefully and constantly suppress, in favor of more objective analysis. Emotionality pure and simple… unless grounded.
Just to make this point with emphasis, and with no implication of any similarity of content, please go through that little speech soundbyte, and instead of Fielding and Michigan substitute ‘Der Leader’ and ‘Das Fatherland’.
Hear how it works just as well? That’s because all the nouns and adjectives are generic, and filled with fervor. Now just to fully rule out misunderstanding, what gives that quote (or any quote from a person of repute) depth and meaning is the whole life behind it.
I am NOT implying that Fielding Yost said something maudlin. His whole life was behind it, so it was not. Potentially, yes. Actually maudlin, no. Deeply moving is how it came across to me… but only because I knew who the speaker was.
Could legendary Coach Bear Bryant of Alabama have said those words and moved me as much, emotionally..? In my case, yes, nearly. Does that mean Bear Bryant is a ‘Michigan Man’..? Don’t fear, Descartes had the same problems initially.
* * * *
If this comes through OK I’ll finish up the rest, including how your NPR piece grievously offended the sensibilities of exactly those whom you are trying to reach, ie ‘rational people’; why ‘classy’ is in fact not classy, proved without probabilistic hedging; and also the actual answer of what a Michigan Man is, in the other, final part. First part launched…
Daniel,
I’ve printed every comment intended for the public that has come in, every week. I simply want to spare my readers personal correspondence, which occasionally comes in, too.
I have some errands to run but will respond later. In the meantime, however, you’ll note that other writers follow the rule we have borrowed here from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and others: contributors are expected to sign their full names.
Thank you.
-John U. Bacon
Thank you John, I again emphasize the term ‘new to this site’, so my apologizes for any transgressions. As you can see, some thought has gone into this posting, so I had no interest in having it disappear into a void or vacuum, as longer comments on serious sites sometimes do by accident or by intent.
Encouraged by the prospect of not-wasting time, I therefore conclude, with specifics.
I start with the basic premise that my near total agreement with everything you say on the subject does not count for anything, other than that we feel and think the same way about it. That only makes us “in agreement”, not necessarily correct in our assertion.
I’m mainly addressing the NPR piece, heard this Friday AM. In it a “Michigan Man” is acknowledged as being a kind of superior or special being, a status which is conferred, in your opinion and mine, appropriately. A certain commitment to a higher standard of behavior, of being, of ethics, of sensitivity to some important nuances… results over time in the formation of a kind of admirable and winsome sensibility. This is given the term, a “Michigan Man”, and you identify several key characteristics:
“Honor”, “sacrifice”, “pride in your program”, “humility of self”. As stated in my first part, human behavior to rejoice in.
To cut and paste from that above material.. “..Simple fervor, extreme loyalty, compassionate bonding, yes, John, these are all basic human Goods. And by the way we’re designed, they are among the human activities which stimulate the Reward Circuit in the brain.”
You go on to speak of a moment of comraderie, compassion, charity shown when a Wolverine player developed a serious cancer condition. Wonderful, I agree, why be alive, if not to rise up in assistance to one’s fellows?
And THIS right here is why this “Michigan Man” attitude is so irksome to others.
There is no avoiding it. This attitude inherently implies, as a matter of logic, that some bloke in Tennessee or Idaho or Utah or wherever ISN’T going to be equally likely to raise funds for medical expenses, or demonstrate honor, or sacrifice.
Their attitude is, HEY, folks from Michigan, there’s already a term out there, and the term is “good man”, or to be even less sexist, “good person”.
John, if and when you see exactly what I’m honing in on here like a dentist’s drill, please help me share it with others.
“My Side Bias” is the flip side of xenophobia. One is an excessive state of self-comfort. The other is excessive caution, unto paranoia. But both represent a skewed way of viewing things.
When you spoke of quoting Fielding Yost to a wide variety of Michigan related audiences, and spoke of folks going into instant warm and fuzzies, you specifically said “..and people would involuntarily nod, and etc.”
I draw attention here to the term “involuntary”. If you rub a cat under its chin just right, it will purr and nod its head up and down in an involuntary fashion.
The really meaningful nodding is the voluntary kind.
And because you still carry this unclarity within you, the resort to the lame and the limp was needed. It’s merely cute to offer up, as any kind of assertion that ‘Michigan Men’ exist, that it is comparable to “pornography, as in the Supreme Court Justice and his famous quote about not being able to define it but knowing it when he sees it.” (Prior is contraction and paraphrase for space, hopefully with no loss of your simple clear meaning).
I disagree. From what I’ve heard from you it is quite possible that some of what you deem erotica I might deem pornography. But that’s neither here nor there, on a logical basis that is NOT the right realm of analysis. If the concept of a ‘Michigan Man’ is a valid one it will have independent objective existence, and will not be dependent upon esthetic judgments and esthetic agreements. Again, that fuels those who cry “elitist”, who say we snoots from Ann Arbor simply think we can recognize anything including pornography better than others, without necessarily being able to show any additional certification or field experience.
Therefore, in conclusion, for there to BE indeed this phenomenon called “A Michigan Man”, someone who by affiliation with, and support of, some common institution, attains and manifests a certain Way about him or her, then it would have to do with something innately unique to Michigan.
It would have to be an upright goodness with a local flavor, rising up out of the land of many rivers and lakes, from the topography, the geothermal electrical currents, the minerals in the water, the culture and tradition of local colleges, the history of work force, etc. etc. Anything symbolic would have to be grounded in the bedrock of the real.
WHY is the Michigan mascot the Wolverine? Ever pondered that?
Vile nasty animal, vicious, called by the Native Americans ‘the glutton’, because it can eat nearly its own weight at a sitting, something not even the fat blob Sports Talk Show guys out of Detroit can do at a buffet.
Wolverines are survivors. Fierce little guys, they can take down a Caribou one on one on a good day. Wolverines make odd squeally sounds as they rend and tear and gobble. True. Sorry. They terrorized Indian camps; and Indian children up to a couple years old were sometimes taken by the nasty brutes. Yeah! Go Blue!
WHAT are we identifying with here? What is the MICHIGAN element of the equation? You’ve already nailed down the good-person element, it’s pretty universal.
Is it the culture of Ann Arbor, tempored by, and mixed in, and up by other diverse elements of Washtenaw County? Is it Branch Rickey? Is it Tom Hayden and the Students for a Democratic Society, is it the principled stands on affirmative action taken by the Law School and the University at large, in recent years?
Is it the working-class sports heros of the nearby Detroit sports teams?
Does it have something to do with the symbolic, with the BLOCK M, which is not a script M, and implies a sense of stability and groundedness? Michigan forms a block M.. and Ohio State’s marching band forms a script Ohio… any moral implications to be drawn from that? Probably not…
These are just thought balloons, none is right or wrong per se. Was it just the simple good luck for our Football Program to have landed (more or less at random) a few good eggs like Fielding Yost and Gerald Ford and Bo Schembechler? Probably somewhat…
But then again, they stayed. They may have been strands of cosmic pasta thrown at the wall– but bottom line, they stuck. And they emitted a way of being, and a kind of culture and ethos. However, any culture that springs from a charismatic individual WILL inevitably attenuate over time.
Just because Bo had integrity back in the 1980s, does that mean I can buy a Maize and Blue teeshirt and somehow partake of his ‘manna’, his ‘kahuna’? Clearly not.
John, I think this question is about as important a question as there is. And I don’t want to dissuade you from pursuing it with vigor. I’m hoping some of this food for thought helps you come up with some better understandings and articulations, before your signings and book tour ahead.
Daniel M. Schulman ’77
There used to be a guy who would write long-winded, wordy replies to my undergraduate school newspaper like this. He thought he was extremely intelligent and therefore, had to show it through his writing. Everyone else thought he was a joke. He couldn’t get out of his own way when he wrote.
There is a skill in being able to make a point clearly and succinctly. I can’t say there is much skill or meaning in the verbal masturbation to be witnessed above.
Matthew E. Kettmann ’08
Hi John,
Ignore the clueless and the critics, your answer to the question about what the phrase “Michigan Man” means is perfect and right on. Only an alumnus can understand exactly what that means, and only some of them for that matter. You nailed it perfectly, and those who do not understand it, are simply not Michigan Men. Enough said! Keep up the good work and the quest to tell the truth, in the end, that is what counts!
Go Blue!
BBA, The University of Michigan, Class ’81
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary! In the language of Charlie Brown, “Good Grief!”
Dan, my man, there is a book in you somewhere. Please go massage your Reward Circuit, embrace your rush, and give us, your classless readership,something, more nearly, and, unabashedly, befitting Der Fuhrer.
Dan Schoolman’
“MM,” as you have defined him, is an illusion. Me thinks you might be an intransigent apparition. Auf Wiedersehen, life is too short to dance with the UGLY men.
FB Jean Matthews
..”The Michigan Man, as you have defined him, is an illusion.”
Excellent, Ms. Matthews. All serious inquiry begins thusly, as you’ve done; a bit silly, and maybe a tad drunk, but with a solid question or premise.
I believe my definition is pathetic and fuzzy and poorly presented, a direct result of not having much time to devote to a serious subject. But I do NOT believe the concept is illusory. Nor do I believe that Mr. Bacon is really ‘delusional’ in speaking of it, that is merely a rhetorical device, a taunt from his adversaries he was not able to swat away.
Nor do I believe it’s a real but “hollow” concept. What I tried to do is find ways in which it would or could in fact BE substantive. Unique culture arises in specific locations for quite tangible and physical reasons. I tried to give Mr. Bacon–Michigan’s mightiest chanticleer, and the current Champion of its athletic spirit and zeitgeist–some caption-headings he can mentally click on and ponder, before he goes out and pulls another “Alex Rodriguez” on us, either on his tour, or on NPR. (See the last line of the baseball poem, “Casey At the Bat”.) I hope he will come up with a better definition than “it’s kinda like pornography.”
I do more than hope, since he is in fact, despite his self-doubts, a “Michigan Man” to the core; I TRUST that he will do better next time.
And while on a baseball tangent, Ms. Meadows, you might yourself ponder the words of the much-quoted Yogi Berra, one of the most feared batters of all time, before concluding as you do, below, regarding how to dance, and who with…
-When someone once commented on his rumpled homely face, Yogi Berra allegedly quipped, “..who cares if I’m ugly, I dont hit with my face.”
with whom…sorry ….Vandy terminal
You might wish to give some credit to the true illusion…..the oval…..unlike all other balls, no one can call the bounce,the receiver, the height – the distance, nor the trajectory before he leaves the huddle…..As ole’ Jerry Clower said, “What it was, was football.” A geometric oval undefined in the unembraceable disambiguation by ole’ Rene,’and this ole’ Achtzig yahr ault halb-birn ,(Assisted Living)Americanerin. This,phenomenon, this OVAL, will continue to elude Dan, John, and all mankind…….. the football shape should always be respected in the equation at any level..sandlot – to NFL….
Amerikanerin -never proof – Die Frau MEADOWS(Example) (?)
Fuhrer is Leader in Deutsch…..
Hi John,
I much enjoy the comments here. I must admit I went to dictionary, more often then usual, for these. By the way, its Monday morning and I’m quite sober.
A Chanticleer? Ok, That is a moniker I can live with, particulary when it espouses the values as you do, sorely needed nowadays, not just in college athletics.
Please continue the tradition of your fine and outstanding journalism. Bravo.
PS: I’m eagerly awaiting your book, pre-ordered on iBooks.
Best Regards.
“Chanticleer, indigenous to all climes.” Chaucer
Daniel misses the boat entirely in his attempt to parade his intellectuality by criticizing your piece. It is perfectly legitimate (and sensible) to use a term such as Michigan Man” to call out the best and most noble qualities in a person, what Abraham Lincoln referred to as “the better angels of our nature.” It is similar to referring to someone as “a true Christian” or “a mensch.” To do so by no means excludes non-Christians or non-Jews from having the same qualities of character. It simply means that the person’s actions reflect the best ideals of group which he or she identifies with.
Jim-
I can’t agree that I missed the boat entirely, because my position, and my point, was nuanced. I totally agree (and said so, above, many times) that there is something about Ann Arbor, about the University, and about the football and athletic tradition here, that is noble and worthy. And I stated, as I sincerely believe, and have said to John in person at times, that he embodies that which he admires.
My main point is that these traits are NOT unique to Michigan or its alumni family.
Think about the logic of it. Admirable as they may be, and a close match to the criteria you yourself stated, can one call Coach Bear Bryant of Alabama, or basketball coach John Wooden of UCLA, “Michigan Men”..?
I was disappointed that John could not give a convincing definition to those who are critics. All he could say is that he “knows it when he sees it”. I personally don’t doubt that. When someone like him, with time to prepare a short radio essay (ie. not caught, while distracted, by a random question), is fuzzy about a concept and vague in defining it, well, maybe the concept itself is fuzzy.
A fuzzy concept, in conjunction with a sense of personal or group piety, can be irksome to others; and indeed many are irked by the use of this term.
I’m not. I’m just distressed that John, in his radio essay, said that he was “occasionally tempted to chuck the concept entirely”.
A “true Christian” or a “real mensch” would not be so tempted. They would never doubt the underlying reality and think at times that the concept is empty. Again, perhaps that’s because those concepts are more bedrock, and not fuzzy. And if we get an emotional boost or ‘hit’ from such self-labellings, then we ought be especially careful in examining their validity.
Dear Loyal Readers,
Much thanks for the spirited discussion.
I feel I should reply more often to your great responses, both to create a dialogue and let you know I’m reading them and appreciate the feedback, whatever it may be. But then I tend to resort to the Writers’ Workshop Rules, where the writer is not allowed to respond to his classmates’ comments, because after all, he won’t be there when the reader dives into his work to answer whatever questions the reader might have.
Besides, I figure, Lord knows I get plenty of opportunities to say my piece, while most readers don’t. And finally, the marketplace of ideas — something I first learned about at good ol’ Huron High — tends to sort things out, just as it should.
And that’s where you Loyal Readers and Great Writers come to the fore — and have once again.
The last word on this subject is yours — well earned, and well used.
As always, THANK YOU!
-John
There, Jim, I finally have a concrete example of what I’ve been driving at. Today, in an NPR podcast for ‘Three and Out’, John said the following, quote: “..great institutions can only be built on the truth – something the world-class professors at the University of Michigan teach their students to pursue wherever it leads, without fear…For those who say this book will hurt Michigan, I can only respond: not the Michigan I know.”
THAT is specific. That’s something which conveys to a disbelieving outside world WHY a ‘Michigan Man’ might actually exist, and not be an illusion, as Ms. Meadows here, and others elsewhere, have maintained. World class professors, who trickle-down a respect for truth and an ethos of honesty, regardless of cost.
Isn’t that better and more convincing than saying it’s a potentially “chuckable” concept which is “like pornography”…?
If Mr. Bacon keeps improving like this, he’ll be a polished public speaker in no time.