As the Truth sees it…

It started with “Seinfeld” and carried over into “The Sopranos” and was picked up again by “Lost” Sunday night. You all know what I’m talking about. Great television shows ending their series with bad finales.
I had never been a huge fan of “Lost,” but I got into it the last couple of years. And I was especially intrigued this season knowing it would be its last. Suffice to say, I was pretty stoked to watch the series finale and find out why Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, Locke and the others had to go through this six year ordeal on an island in the middle of nowhere. And whatever happened to Michael and Walt?
I got nothing. Let me rephrase that. I got a few things that amounted to nothing. At the end of the two-hour retrospective and two-and-one-half-hour-long finale, I was just as lost as I was when I first tried the watch the show years ago.
I do not understand why writers think they have to try and be extra clever when ending a show. A la Seinfeld. Maybe they felt they had to keep to the shows ideals of making everything a big secret and for you figure out your own ending. A la The Sopranos.
As a fan, all I want is all my questions answered clearly and concisely. I want to know that the amount of time I invested in a show was worth it. Lost prevented that from happening with all of its ambiguity.
I can promise you one thing. When tonight’s series finale of “24″ comes to an end, there will be very few unanswered questions. Hopefully the creators of “Lost” are watching.
Michael Kinney

America’s fascination with rewriting history took another step in the wrong direction today. The Texas State Board of Education has decided to change how slavery, civil rights, capitalism, the U.N. and other historical black marks are taught in classrooms around the country. The new standards will be taught to almost 5 million Texas students for the next decade in new textbooks that will written with the watered down history in them
But it’s not just Texas who will have to deal with this. Because the Lone Star state’s size, publishers will tailor textbooks to the state’s standards and students around the U.S. will get the same texts.
The 15-member board voted 9-5 on each new amendment. The five who voted against have been classified as Liberal, while those who voted for the changed are described as conservative.
According to conservatives on the board, all they are doing is balancing a liberal slant that they believe had filtered into the textbooks in recent decades. But to me it looks like Texas wants us to forget all the evil that has been done in name of making this nation of ours. They want to change the reasons for the civil war, defend McCarthyism, plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions the separation of church and state, and claims that the U.S. government was infiltrated by Communists during the Cold War.
As the saying goes, if you don’t know your history, you are bound to relive it.
Below is an excerpts from the new Texas history textbooks. See if you can find what is wrong.

Historians often use the phrase “American exceptionalism” to highlight how the United States has preserved its freedoms (such as the right to own a gun under the Second Amendment to the Constitution) and its representative government (small population states such as Wyoming, the home of former Vice President Dick Cheney, have as many votes in the Senate as Democratic California) with other nations, such as France, which have squandered their liberties through socialistic experiments.
Part of the genius of America — which many leading thinkers believe is derived from the nation’s Christian faith — is that at times of peril ordinary men (and, someday, maybe ordinary women) step forward to achieve historical greatness. Consider a failed one-term congressman and railroad attorney named Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) or an obscure professor of history at the University of West Georgia named Newt Gingrich (1943- ). So it was in Wheeling, W. Va., on a blustery winter evening in February 1950 when a first-term Wisconsin senator named Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) aroused a complacent America to confront the security threat from Ivy League-educated Soviet spies who had infiltrated the State Department and the presidency of Harry Truman (1884-1972).
Addressing a Republican Party dinner at the McClure Hotel in Wheeling, McCarthy, a World War II Marine hero, declared, “I have in my hand a list of 205 [men] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party.” As McCarthy spoke, West Virginians had just learned that a German-born nuclear physicist named Klaus Fuchs (1911-1988) had been arrested in London for passing on U.S. atomic secrets to Soviet agents. The Ivy League-educated Alger Hiss (1904-1996), a former top Democratic State Department official who had been supported by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, was about to be convicted in federal court on perjury charges relating to espionage.
Yet instead of being treated as a truth-telling hero, McCarthy was reviled by the liberal establishment (particularly The New York Times and CBS News), who exaggerated the importance of unfortunate factual errors made by the anti-Communist Wisconsin senator. Sadly, under relentless pressure from the liberal Democratic enablers of Soviet agents, McCarthy lapsed into alcoholism, which led to his untimely death. Although McCarthy was unjustly censured by the Democratic Senate in 1954, the Wisconsin senator’s patriotic contributions have long been championed by such objective commentators as former Richard Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan (1938- ) and erudite magazine publisher William F. Buckley (1925-2008).

Study Questions:
1). During a televised 1954 confrontation with McCarthy, Harvard-educated liberal lawyer Joseph Welch melodramatically declared, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Do you think this was a case of “shooting the messenger” because liberals were so embarrassed about their woeful record in fighting Communism?
2). Compare and contrast Senator McCarthy and Vice President Dick Cheney. Based on your personal experience, explain why liberals are so reluctant to face up to the dangerous threat from Islamic terrorism.
3). How many card-carrying Communists do you believe are currently in the State Department under the leadership of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?
More info can be found at (http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/15/texas-textbook-wars-how-conservatives-might-teach-history/)

One of the worst sporting events I ever attended was the 2004 Orange Bowl. The trip was great up until kick-off. From there, it turned into a nightmare as I had to sit around and watch Oklahoma get crushed 55-19 and lose the BCS Championship to USC.
Fastforward six years and that night may turn out to be pretty good. USC is currently under investigation by the NCAA for infractions surrounding then star tailback Reggie Bush. He is accused of receiving money and gifts during his days at USC, which is a violation.
The big question is what would happen to USC title and Bush’s 2005 Heisman if the program is found to have done wrong?
Since the NCAA doesn’t award a national champion in Division I Bowl Subdivision football, it would come down to the BCS to decide.
Each program that has recently been punished due to ineligible players has had to vacate wins, not forfeit. Amazingly, there is a difference.
If you are a Sooner fan, would you still want the championship after the way USC demoralized Oklahoma?
As a competitor, I would want it. If I can’t beat you on the field, than I do not deserve it. But as a fan, hand the trophy over and start rewriting the history books. Twenty years from now, all that will mater who has the most titles. No one will even remember how they got one in 2004. Most current fans do not even realize that OU won one of its titles while on probation in the 70s.
In the end, it’s all about perspective, I guess.
Michael Kinney

Looking forward to going to tonight’s Meet of Champions in Moore. I’ve always wondered what would happen if the best athletes in 2A, 4A or 5A competed against the top runners in 6A. Hopefully, tonight I will find out.
Events start at 6 p.m.

I’m not saying LeBron James choked, but from the way he looked tonight they should rename his MVPs: Most Vulnerable Player.

I saw Iron Man 2 the other day. Was not impressed. Robert Downey Jr. and Don Cheadle were cool. Mickey Rourke a decent bad guy. But the film dragged along.
I thought about sneaking out and going to see another movie. However, my date decided she really wanted to see it. If you are on a movie date, is it acceptable to leave them while you go and watch a more enjoyable film? Would this person have the right to be upset?
Next time this happens, I will find out.

As a freshman in college a professor asked a class I was in to jot down what people we admired growing up. I listed Magic Johnson, Thuragood Marshall, Jackie Robinson and Lawrence Taylor.
Besides being black or a professional athlete, L.T. seemingly has nothing in common with the other three men. But what drew me to the beleaguered Hall of Famer, besides reshaping the way defense is played in the NFL, is that he had so many problems. Crack addict and narcissist were just a few issues in his well-publicized life. But he always found a away to do his job and he kept fighting to clean up his act. He never gave up. Ten years ago he finally got off drugs, got back with his family and has been an upstanding citizen since.
That is why when the news of him being charged and arrested for the third-degree rape of a 15-year old in a motel in New York hit the wires Thursday morning, I was stunned. I have no clue if the allegations are true or not. I truly hope they are false. But if they are correct, I will have to make a decision. Does this terrible crime force me to move him off my list? Does one act cancel out the joy he brought as one of the most menacing and talented men to even play in the NFL?
A question that I have always struggled with is can a person be considered great, even if they have major character flaws. Most of America’s founding fathers owned slaves, but they are considered great men. John Kennedy had multiple affairs, but he is seen as a great president.
While I am in no way saying L.T. belongs in the same discussion as Thomas Jefferson or JFK as far as achievement, people still make a conscious effort to overlook their issues and regard them highly.
If it comes out that L.T. is guilty of the crimes he is charged with, I will find out if I can do the same.
Michael Kinney