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Friday, August 15, 2025

Opinion | Columns

Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Celebrity proves a distraction to voters

Al Franken is a funny guy. He is also intelligent and seems to understand the needs of his constituents. And Franken seems earnest in his desire to be a U.S. Senator. But despite all this, he should not have run for the position.


Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

War-weary Americans turn to tabloids

Sometime last week in between the earth-shattering news that Michael Jackson, the OxiClean pitchman and Farrah Fawcett had all actually died within the same cosmic time frame, two significant news items went largely unnoticed.


Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Web site offers tips for lazy folks

So if any of you are like me, you're probably an incredibly lazy person. And I don't mean ordinary, run-of the-mill lazy - I mean you elevate it to an art form. There's nothing wrong with laziness, by the way, so don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Laziness - the desire to exert the least possible effort - has given rise to our most wonderful human ingenuities. If someone hadn't been too lazy to walk, we probably wouldn't have cars. If someone hadn't been too lazy to try and make a genuine connection with a woman, we probably wouldn't have such brilliant pick up lines as "Was your dad a baker, because your buns are out of this world!" The bottom line is that laziness keeps us sharp. Because of it we are ever-vigilant for the next thing that will make our lives easier and, in our own twisted way, richer.


Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Dead celebrities don’t cease to charm

There are those rare moments that, in one fell swoop, remind us all of the ephemerality and fragility of life and, generally speaking, those moments come after a loss. We have all just experienced one of those moments - only this time it dragged on for days. In the span of one week, we lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and Billy Mays. All of them American icons and, now, all of them gone.


Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Media outlets focus too much on Iran

Like a bad version of "The Blair Witch Project," amateur video of riots and protests in Iran fill CNN's airwaves. Covering the turmoil in Iran has become en vogue, and publicly declaring one's alignment with Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the emblematic opposition candidate who lost in the last Iranian rigged election three weeks ago, has become as culturally trendy for some as a Free Tibet bumper sticker.


Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  COLUMNS

Iranian youth rely on Twitter to inform world about elections

Abdul-Azim Mohammed was providing a play-by-play of the Iran Election early Sunday morning. Azim first reported that local police stations had been forced to burn ballot boxes filled with votes for Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential challenger. A few minutes later, Azim declared that Internet access and phone lines had been cut off. Later, Azim's reports of people filling the streets of Tehran were verified with BBC footage showing legions of angry young Iranians chanting "Death to the Dictator" in the streets.



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