We’re nearing the end stretch of the summer semesters and I’m sure you readers are aching to make the days count. Let us keep those spirits up with another riveting edition of…Darts and Laurels.
So I’m sure many of us have heard of that dreadful business in Chattanooga, Tennessee, whereupon five brave service members lost their lives in a senseless shooting.
Bless their souls.
However, did you know that some of these brave servicemen had evacuated the naval training center where part of the shooting took place, some of them helping others scale a fence, before running back into shooter’s sights in order to draw his fire away from a larger group?
Where we’re from, that’s called self-sacrifice, and we no longer feel that kind of sacrifice merits the title of “victim.” Those servicemen were heroes, and we’re rewarding them a posthumous laurel for their sacrifice.
All right, now that we’re finished wiping away our tears it’s time to shed a few more.
Over the weekend Gainesville lost one of its more famous (or infamous depending on who you ask) entrepreneurs.
Josh Greenberg, co-founder of Grooveshark, was found dead upon his bed from reasons yet unknown to us. All we know is that the Gainesville Police Department does not suspect foul play, and they are currently waiting on toxicology reports.
No matter what you thought of the fellow’s business practices, many students have now lost a promising role model in the arena of personal ambitions and a young man with bright ideas is now dead.
That gets a dart for being very sad.
All right, all right.
We’ll stop with the sad news and return to the mildly questionable.
Next up, Ferguson. As in Ferguson the town where a certain shooting raised riots and summoned forth a reenergized racial debate still going on today.
They recently hired a new African-American police chief. Andre Anderson will be taking his place as the city’s interim police chief.
We’re not sure if the appointment was merely a massive public relations Band-Aid on the events from August or an actual step forward in terms of the racial controversy, so we’re therefore unable to quite decide whether to dart or laurel the matter.
We’ll leave it to you to decide and carve destiny’s will yourself upon the carapace of the news headlines.
Lastly, parents shouldn’t get intoxicated and neglect their children. That’s what we call irresponsibility, and we have no desire to further the cause of such. Erica Donaldson, you do not simply leave a child playing at the edge of a river while you dance and sing.
Now we’re not saying that Erica Donaldson was on drugs at the time, we’re just saying that deputies found a syringe, a metal spoon and an open package of Suboxone, a drug used to treat opiate addiction, among her belongings when deputies arrested her.
While her roughly 2-year-old daughter was playing in a river in soiled underwear, Donaldson was dancing and singing.
For obvious reasons, that gets a nice, sterilized dart.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 7/23/15]
