Three Ws and an H

In journalism school, prospective reporters and broadcasters learn how to construct a news story using essential elements called “the five Ws and the H.” These useful tools are six basic questions reporters should ask to make sure they have covered all the bases: who, what, when, where, why and how.

Who knows what’s taught now. “Hmm, let’s make a TikTok video using all 26 letters of the alphabet.” (Insert eye-roll emoji here.)

Since it’s the last Saturday in February, I’m doing a blog post roundup using a variation on the five Ws and the H theme. At this moment, I’ve only got three Ws. But I’m retired and can blame it on the Florida sun.

Take a breath. Here we go:

War: Well, Putin finally did it. The Former Guy’s “KG-BFF” invaded Ukraine. He wants it. Now. All of it. The authoritarian president of Russia has the sovereign nation surrounded on three sides. As of Friday, Russian troops had entered Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and Moscow rejected talks vowing to topple the government of the second largest country in Europe (after Russia, of course).

Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Apparently, a deadly pandemic wasn’t enough to keep the 69-year-old tyrant occupied. We have a close family friend of Ukrainian descent who is naturally distraught over this whole mess. He’s still got relatives over there and is angry about the latest developments, as well as with our nation’s latest attempts to stop Putin’s advances. There’s got to be a better way than economic sanctions to keep this shirtless monster in check and yet appease his egomaniacal ways. Is there? Short of starting World War III, I don’t know.

Stay tuned. For a clearer understanding of how and why this came about, here’s a recent blog post by Nicholas Zajciw, the son of my Ukrainian-American friend. It’s called “My Thoughts on Ukraine.” Here’s the link: https://zajciw.com/blog/blog-post

Woke: The content of this item is almost too much for me to stomach: In America 2022, there is a coordinated effort to censor honest dialogue about gender and race discrimination in our classrooms. The gist: Florida Republicans got two major wins last week when the House passed the “Stop WOKE Act” and the Senate passed another known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Sponsored by a GOP congressman from Miami Springs, the “Stop WOKE Act” essentially seeks to ban classroom discussion and corporate training that makes students or employees feel “discomfort” over their race. 

More than once lately I have heard this summation from teachers I know and love: “The goal of education isn’t to make you comfortable.”

An aside: Fueled by social media, the word “woke” has been around since 2017. According to Merriam-Webster, woke means “aware and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). Like “politically correct,” the word “woke” has come to connote the opposite of what it actually means. If you don’t know what it means, then you probably aren’t. Woke, that is.

The second bill, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics, including me, passed Florida’s House committee in January. It would ban school instruction on LGBTQ+ people and issues, such as sexual orientation and gender identity. It also would encourage parents to sue schools (and teachers) that engage in these topics.

Not surprisingly, versions of both bills are advancing in the Florida Senate.

Before last month’s vote, Ocala Republican Sen. Dennis Baxley said the “Don’t Say Gay” bill was intended for children age 3 through third grade, and that teachers should respond with “Ask your mother” when students pose questions about their sexuality.

Swear. To. God.

It’s not just Florida. There are 15 similar bills moving through state legislatures. A recent report from The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention and crisis intervention group, found that LGBTQ+ youth who learned about those issues in school had 23 percent lower odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the last year.

Say it one more time with feeling: The goal of education isn’t to make you comfortable.

Both Florida bills are backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is eager to sign them because he is planning to run for president in 2024 and “people want to live freely in Florida.” No, wait. He said that Thursday when he and Florida’s new controversial surgeon general (an outlier who shuns masks, isolation and vaccines, but promotes the animal anti-parasite drug Ivermectin for two-leggeds) announced changes to the state’s COVID-19 guidelines in a video titled “Buck the CDC.” The gist: Wearing a mask, isolating when you’re infected and getting vaccinated creates a “two-tiered society.”

Politics over people, man. Nearly 950,000 dead Americans versus the rest of us who did (and continue to do) the right thing to protect ourselves and those around us.

Worst: I’m speaking, of course, about inflation. Rising prices. The worst in nearly 40 years. It’s bad. (I minored in economics, can you tell?) Everything, it seems, costs more. Cars, gas, food, clothing. Florida condo rentals.

According to CNN Business, overall consumer prices rose in 2021 at the fastest pace in 39 years. This means it is the worst inflation experienced by anyone not on the cusp of retirement or older. Not us.

But I can tell you as awful as it is now, inflation was much worse in the 1970s (12.2% in 1974). Remember President Gerald Ford’s disastrous “Whip Inflation Now” buttons? Or in April 1980, when inflation hit a record high of 14.6%, leading to President Jimmy Carter’s defeat that November?

I know I sound like my father, but it was so much worse back then. I know because I was a new college graduate trying to find a job at a newspaper. Any job. Any newspaper. There were none to be had in Detroit or anywhere else in the Midwest, for that matter. I had to move nearly 1,400 miles to Miami to work my butt off for peanuts. Best thing I ever did.

Hope: Whitney Houston released “Greatest Love of All” in 1985 for her debut album. The song, written by Linda Creed and Michael Masser, was about lyricist Creed’s long battle with breast cancer, which took her life at age 37, weeks before the song reached No. 1 on the charts in 1986. Here’s a sampling of her beautiful lyrics, which will always give me, well, hope:

“I believe the children are our future.

Teach them well and let them lead the way.

Show them all the beauty they possess inside.

Give them a sense of pride to make it easier.

Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.”

Indeed. Children are our future, and they’re so much smarter these days.

Way more “woke” than we are or could ever be.

Take my 8-year-old great-niece, wise beyond her years, who recently heard her 70-something grandmother talking on the phone.

“Who was that?” the curious child asked.

“My girlfriend,” the grandmother replied.

“Oh. Gramma, are you gay?”

“Huh? No. Why would you ask me that?” she said.

“Because you have a girlfriend.”

“Yes, well, she’s my friend who happens to be a girl.”

“OK. So, do you have any snacks?”

Out of the mouths of babes.

This is the same child who always, always asks Rebecca and me the same question every time we see her: “Are you two sisters?”

No, well, yeah, sort of.

“But you live together in the same house and have a dog?”

Yes.

“Why?”

Ask your mother.