Opinion

Each form of mass communication has advantages and disadvantages. There is no secret about that. Proponents of each medium, at various times in history, have claimed accurately they are better than the others. But is any medium better in all ways? No. As a media history buff with a master of arts degree in mass communication-journalism, I can report the invention of radio did not doom newspapers, no matter how hard radio advertising staff members tried to broadcast that narrative to consumers in the early days of the once-mighty NBC Red and Blue networks. Both radio networks are defunct today. But radio continues. So do newspapers.

The so-called “slap heard round the world” might have confused the international audience that watched the Academy Awards. Laughing a moment earlier at Chris Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, Will Smith got out of his chair, walked up and smacked Rock in the mouth.

Since the Russians are occupying eastern Ukraine, and are attacking Kyiv from the north, east and south, maybe NATO military forces with U.S. support should move into western Ukraine to prevent Russia from completely overrunning Ukraine.

Suspicions that might arise in this election year – after another census resulted in yet another undercount of minorities – are understandable, even expected. Generally, black and Latino voters lean toward Democrats.

Some April 5 elections will not be on the ballot. There will be no story about Hardin-Central or Orrick boards of education candidates and their views on wearing masks, critical race theory, teacher pay and sexual identity.

Josh Hawley, Missouri’s firstterm junior U.S. senator, works overtime to try to make himself sound like a big deal.

From its beginning in 1918, Russian Communists led by Lenin and then Stalin sought to control populations by intimidation, brutality and death. Lenin murdered 6 million people and Stalin three times as many. During Stalin’s reign from 1925 to 1953, Communism spread to Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. President Reagan referred to the USSR as the “evil empire,” and President Eisenhower stated the Soviet government believed in the “force of huge armies, subversion and rule of neighboring nations.”

I hear a lot on TV about rising gas prices and have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, Missouri has some of the lowest gasoline taxes in the United States, so that saves me money.

Our Missouri legislators really do not seem to care for the poor or the will of the people. We the people voted to expand Medicaid to cover about 200,000 more poor Missourians.

The right to redress government is part of the U.S. Constitution and is practiced with vigor in Missouri, but some Republicans want to change that and are meeting opposition rightly from conservatives within their own party.