For all the time we’ve spent poking fun at the religious nuts on Turlington during our time at UF, now we’re the ones saying, “The end is nigh.”
We’re not buying all that 2012 garbage, but when it comes to both UF and this newspaper, today is the end of the line for many of us.
With that in mind, let’s wrap up the semester with the these-four-months-went-by-like-a-blur-so-let’s-queue-the-instant-replay edition of Darts & Laurels.
When we returned from winter break, we were greeted with the pomp of a new governor taking office. The irony of his extravagant inauguration amid these harsh economic times didn’t escape us in January, but we gave him a pass.
Then we watched him go from silly to downright crazy. For giving other states more reason to look down on us, we’re slinging a we’ve-never-seen-voters’-regret-manifest-quite-this-quickly DART at Gov. Rick Scott. Then again, he helped fuel some decent water-cooler talk, so we’ll give him that.
In the same few weeks, we watched Middle Eastern governments such as those in Libya, Tunisia and Bahrain begin to wear under pressure from their citizens. Some, like Egypt, crumbled.
We’re still waiting for the dust to clear, and we’re hoping it will reveal stable democracies in affected countries. But we’re not holding our breath.
Cynicism out of the way, we’re giving a now-that-takes-serious-cajones LAUREL to the protestors who are changing the world one anti-Gadhafi sign at a time.
We thought we made it through February relatively unscathed, but then came Student Government elections. We’re used to the circus of writing stories, examining platforms and shooting photos on election night. But endorsements were still difficult.
We caught a lot of flak for our choice, but we’ve got to lob a we-didn’t-realize-we-were-so-stereotyped DART at campus pigeonholers.
Contrary to popular belief, we’re not anti-Greek, nor are we required to endorse the minority party. We strive to be fair and keep an open mind. That’s what news organizations are supposed to do.
Along those lines, we’re proud of how most news groups handled what was to become a nightmare in March. For turning their heads and denying Terry Jones and his church the platform they so desperately wanted, we’re throwing a keeping-it-on-the-DL-was-the-right-choice LAUREL around the necks of all the news outlets that skipped on the Quran trial story.
And we’ve got a spare LAUREL in our pocket for our mayor, Craig Lowe, who has made it a point to condemn Jones as an unwanted voice for this nice town of ours.
It was also in March when we saw the city helping relief efforts in Japan after a massive earthquake and tsunami. Although the ordeal is far from over, we’ve got to hand a lending-a-hand-never-goes-out-of-style LAUREL to everyone who donated to help Japan.
Don’t worry. We also have a perennial LAUREL that goes to all our readers.
We don’t care if you’re letting us interview you, suggesting stories to us or writing us angry letters, you’re the reason we’re still putting out a paper after more than a century.
And for that we offer our sincerest thanks.
