They call it information

Upon hearing of Michael Jackson's death, two pained sensations struck me:

The first was sadness over creative brilliance being snuffed. The second was the knowledge that our celebrity construction/deconstruction machine was about to perform up to its usual, um, standards.

And what a bravura performance it has been. I know this and I have abided by a vow not to watch cable news or morning news shows amid the sensation. But, really, simply turn on your TV and the ambience of overkill seeps through like dead rodent through a wall.

A few years ago I decided forever more to boycott the media phenomenon of the moment — the missing blonde coed, the celebrity trial, the ill-fated end for someone rich and famous.

How obscene the coverage has become.

It used to be that treatment of the sort we saw about Jackson was reserved for acts of war and deaths of presidents.

Meanwhile, networks that donned flag pins and went 24/7 drumming up war in Iraq barely have time to report the U.S. pull-out from Iraqi cities.

If connected to your world by coaxial cable, you might be hard-pressed to know that North Korea shot missiles into the Pacific soup, that the United States and Russia agreed to cut nuclear arsenals, or that the federal government dropped the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

You say the current frenzy is justified by the death of an unmatched entertainment icon. So, too, with the 2,200 journalists on hand for the verdict four years ago when Jackson was acquitted of child molestation charges.

Would that 1/100th of the attention given to Jackson's trial back then had gone to war aims and claims that drove this nation over a cliff.

One constant dimension of today's "news" coverage is that so little of it is news. The ribbon below the talking head says "breaking story." It's none of the sort.

Most of what passes as "news" is speculation. And most of what fills the 24-hour cable void is speculation by paid experts who suit up to deliver educated guesses to the masses.

This trend gained traction back in the sensational case of murdered child beauty queen Jon Benet Ramsey. The "coverage" of her case lasted just about as long as has U.S. occupation of Iraq, with barely any more light shown on motives and perpetrators.

Most of the news coming out about poor Jon Benet's death wasn't news at all. It was speculation, a direct kin to expectoration. In most cases, it wasn't even well-informed speculation, the little girl's harried parents becoming the focus of a nation of voyeurs. News "consultants" became career rumor mongers relative to her fate. One little girl's death, one industry of info clutter.

She's still dead, by the way. Not a word greeting our waiting ears altered her fate or helped catch her killer, whoever that is.

Michael Jackson is dead. That is the "breaking story" even today. How did he die? I'll be curious to know when evidence emerges. But I won't sit spellbound as panels of experts theorize or create suspects out of thin air.

As for the non-stop tributes, that's to be expected. The irony is, as with so many people who die famous, we already know about what they did to get that way. That's why they're celebrities.

Tell us something we don't know. That would be news.

John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.

At least students have right to remain clothed

"You have no right to remain silent. You have no right against self-incrimination. No attorney shall be appointed for you. Don't like it? Who asked you?"

Such are the court-tested Miranda warnings for the lab animals otherwise known as students.

But at least one civil right now is affixed for students— the right not to be strip-searched by your school.

Fortunately, only one Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, thinks the practice is OK after an 8-1 ruling in favor of an Arizona middle-schooler who'd been strip-searched on suspicions that she had ibuprofen on her body.

Yes, ibuprofen. Also known as Advil. Oh, after shaking out her panties and her bra, school officials didn't find any.

Thomas, the lone dissenter, said the ruling opened the door to the prospect that students now would hide drugs in their underwear. And bazookas, no doubt.

He wrote that, "preservation of order, discipline, and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution."

Wow.

As aghast at that statement as you and I might be, realize that Justice Thomas, like Rush Limbaugh and, oh, Kim Il Sung, have bigger constituencies than rational sorts might imagine.

Considering the overreaches so common in today's "zero tolerance" climate, it's a wonder that a girl standing naked before school authority can count on any support whatsoever on our highest court.

Then again, that support is the essence of civil liberties. Of course, listen to what many so-called conservatives say about the subject, and understand that civil liberties are just about the most dangerous thing going.

Did I say lab animals? In many ways the school is the laboratory for those who, though they claim to be conservative (a strain of thought with supposed roots in freedom and libertarianism), are really frothy authoritarians. Generally they'd be OK with a police state, so long as the police don't take their guns.

How blithely they nod when such proposals come down the pike as student uniforms, random drug tests, or turning schools into Shawshank-style lock-ups.

Students? They have no rights. And civil rights are a pernicious influence in society anyway. Right, Justice Thomas?

Hence, you have the suspension of three Westchester (N.Y.) high school girls for saying "vagina" in a presentation of — you won't believe — the Vagina Chronicles.

You have the New York student suspended for holding up a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" poster at a non-school event. He lost his appeal to this Supreme Court.

Incidents like these, and the gamut of overkill under the guise of "zero tolerance," led the New York Civil Liberties Union to push for something called the Student Safety Act. The words evoke images of razor wire and drug-sniffing dogs. Actually it's just the opposite, a response to "schools' reliance on over-policing and overly harsh disciplinary policies." It's a proposal with an audacious premise: that students do have rights.

Advocates point out that too many schools have begun abdicating discretion to zero-tolerance policies and campus police, often resulting in a "suspend now, talk later" mind-set.

I am well aware of the opposite condition, chronic troublemakers endangering others and disrupting class without sanction and without relief for those who want to learn.

Neither situation is acceptable. But the most unacceptable proposition is that we would require individuals to show up at a place — school — where the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights are only things that you learn about, things that apply to your parents but not you.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald. E-mail: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com

End game of the sporting deceit

Few athletes have had better college careers than Curtis Jerrells.

For four years, he started every game at Baylor University, leading the team in scoring and assists each year.

No one could watch this fearless floor leader from Austin's Del Valle High and not project him in a pro uniform.

No one, that is, except possibly the pros.

Last week when the NBA draft sputtered to a close with picks that wouldn't even excite Dick Vitale, Jerrells was exactly like those of us of leaden feet and sofa-toned torsos. No pro teams were calling us, either.

Jerrells will be making money in his sport this year. I'd bet a week's pay on that. But most likely it'll be in Europe or the Continental Basketball Association. Regardless, it will put him in rarefied company.

Being asked to participate in the Dallas Mavericks' NBA Summer League team alone makes it so.

One who won't be in that elite company is a young man named Larry. He was just a kid when he came to my attention — a third-grader who chose to slough off at school because, he said, he was going to be a pro athlete. He was big and athletic. No doubt, adults had encouraged the notion that someday . . .

It never came. He never finished school.

How many times? How many futures have been squandered on such a pretense?

You hear those who have made it, and who have shoe contracts and posses and agents, tell audiences, "Just put your mind to it and you will succeed." It's baloney, of course. They know it. They know how privileged they are.

It's child abuse for young people to be strung along with unrealistic hopes when they could position themselves for countless realistic, and rewarding, hopes. What they need to hear is, "You can't know what the future brings, but you are in control of your future if you keep your options open."

Instead, they get overwrought footwear slogans. "Just do it."

Look up "sport" in the dictionary. It says nothing about "life" — or "death," for that matter. It does mention recreation and enjoyment. Here's a Gatorade slogan that won't fly: Sport is a diversion.

Unfortunately, we look around and see how it's become so much more — so much money for so few, so much angst and attention. Worse yet, we see so many young people thinking it's their ticket. Instead, too often it's a life pass to disillusionment.

The sneaker commercial dares the young to dream.

When young Larry chucked it all as a high school student, his dreams were downsized beyond belief — from making the gargantuan shoe contract to finding the next day's meal. What a comedown. And who was to blame? Many players.

I'm sure one reason Larry set his sights on the unattainable was because he had no father at home modeling how fulfillment — success — can be attained in mundane ways. All he had modeling for him were those who wore the sneakers, who flew over the court, and flashed up and down the field, sort of like what Larry did on the playground among his undersized peers.

For his purposes, Larry had the worst role models imaginable.

He didn't understand that only in the rarest of circumstances do fleet feet and better-than-average size represent a ticket to fame and fortune.

No, the ticket to success is much more basic and entirely devoid of glamour: education, understanding, having a grasp of the world outside the lines.

It's an understanding that you will be happy to know Curtis Jerrells attained somewhere along the line. In May, along with teammates Kevin Rogers and Henry Dugat, he got his degree from Baylor.

Pros or not, they're going to be all right. Instead of waiting in vain for the phone to ring, they'll make the calls.

John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.