Too Cool for School?

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

by James Killough

I had a brief email exchange over the weekend with our contributor Eric Baker in which he brought to my attention that our colleagues in the entertainment biz never leave comments on this blog, but rather send them to us in private emails.  Sometimes I might get a “like” or a quick note when I post a link to a PFC piece on Facebook, but that’s still considered private.  “It’s like being in a high school exclusively made up of cool kids,” I explained in my reply to Baker.

The 17-year-old star of "Life of Pi" is just how I imagined him from the book.

James Tuttle has similar experiences.  For example, in a wee incident last year, he was taken to task by a friend of his, an Oscar-nominated actress, for using the word ‘retarded.’  She protested that he was too intelligent and articulate to need to resort to adjectives that disparaged mentally disabled people; a child of a friend of hers was one such person, etcetera.  Even though I pointed out in a post of my own that the definition and etymology of ‘retarded’ was broad enough to excuse Tuttle’s use of it, the actress’ point was legitimate in light of where we are culturally with the bullying issue.