OPINION | BRENDA LOOPER: How we offend
I'm starting to think that if there's anything at which Americans most truly excel, it's at finding offense.
I'm starting to think that if there's anything at which Americans most truly excel, it's at finding offense.
Anyone else feel like they've been hit by a truck?
I well remember the day that Ronald Reagan was shot. Our class had its usual TV time (usually "Electric Company," I believe) when news came of the attempted as…
OK, I know it's been really hot out there and (hopefully) cooler in your homes, but I'm concerned about some of y'all. Maybe a welfare check is in order. At th…
With Independence Day upon us, celebrating 248 years as a nation, my thoughts turn, as they often do, to the meaning of patriotism.
It's finally officially summer, and even before the season began, my opinion of it remained the same.
This past weekend was pretty busy for me, with finishing up one house/cat-sitting gig and getting ready for another, going to a ceramics sale for a friend who'…
I get a lot of press releases on my work email.
We did this to ourselves. We have no one else to blame.
I joke. A lot. Mostly at my own expense, but sometimes it's watching the reaction of a cat I'm sitting who is bound and determined to find the cat purring in m…
I sometimes talk too much about trolls, but they're a big reason I take a social-media break every week. There's only so much you can do with people whose only…
Technology hasn't been my friend lately. While editing a column last week, the keyboard on my laptop decided to take a vacation. Luckily I had an external keyb…
I was never a fan of debate in high school. I did manage to win one debate in competition, the only one that mattered to me, against an arrogant blowhard I kne…
For the second week in a row, this is not the column I intended to write. I'll eventually get back to what I started on logical fallacies (whataboutism, ad hom…
Saturdays, as many people know, are a social-media-free (and often all media-free) day for me, and this one was all media since I was spending time sitting fur…
Anonymity can be a wonderful thing. Going out with no one recognizing you or asking for anything is a luxury for some people, and you can just go through your …
Books have always been an important part of my life. I learned to read before starting school (in the first class of kindergarteners at our district) because I…
On Valentine's Day when I shared some of the words I love (word nerd, duh), I received an email with the subject line "Wait til April 8."
This time of year is bittersweet for me, with so many memories crowding my mind.
It's been too long since I've talked about fact-checking, especially one particularly important bit: primary sources.
Four years ago today, I got a call from my boss saying that we would be out of the office for a while with the majority of the country. Covid-19 had been decla…
Longtime readers know I'm no fan of politics as practiced today, and why would I be, with all the fabulism, division, insults and ignoring of the law that's be…
It shouldn't be the least bit surprising that I'm not the only word nerd who works at the paper. So when a story shows up online using "Woah," someone's going …
So many thoughts have crowded my head over the past week that it's been hard to settle on a topic for this week's column. But because I want to avoid politics …
While others are sending flowers and candy and words of love to their sweethearts today, I share my billet-doux with the world of words.
Rather than expanding on the excellent editorial on the opposite page Tuesday on the subject of a letter printed on this page last Friday, I'm going into word-…
Probably everyone has had to deal with a friend or family member who has given in to conspiracy theories. But where once those truly invested in outlandish tal…
It should come as no surprise that I was a bookish kid. I learned to read before school ever started, partly because I wanted to be able to do what my brothers…
As birthday weekends go, this one wasn't that bad, even with the absence of red velvet cake (dang it). Plus the "Arctic Hammer" (seriously???) waited till my o…
I had a lot to think about over the weekend: what would have been my brother Corey's 60th birthday, the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.…
It's happened. One of 2023's words of the year is among those voters picked to be banished in Lake Superior State University's 2024 Banished Words List, releas…
It's the most wonderful time of the year ... for word nerds, anyway.
The Christmas season is hard on a lot of us. Estrangements, deaths, illness, work schedules and other things keep us from feeling very merry.
What happens when you let the public vote on a shortlist of words for word of the year?
There's a danger in writing my column early at this time of year.
I'm sensing a theme here. It's still early days, but thus far with two words of the year announced, artificial intelligence is the through line.
It's been a rough few years for me, with the deaths of loved ones, huge unexpected expenses that sapped my savings, and creeping depression and anxiety. Still,…
Every so often, I feel like I'm living in the "Terminator" universe. Not so much because life is grim (and no, I don't believe unstoppable cyborgs are after me…
Two years ago Sunday, I lost my first best friend. My brother Corey was the closest to my age, and I spent probably the first two years of my life being his sh…
After last week's column about jerks, I feel the need to talk about something good on social media. Mark Zuckerberg/Meta actually did something I like.
It used to be a safe assumption that pretty much everyone's default setting was "kind" and "polite," except for those people who had hatred and malice seeping …
With an actual chill in the air, I can finally say it's autumn, which is one of my favorite times of year, and not just because of the leaves turning and it be…
There are people who will never be happy with anything this or any other responsible newspaper does, and a comment on last week's column was indicative of why.
When I was growing up about 20 miles south of Fort Smith, I had multiple newspapers to choose from: the daily Southwest Times Record, plus the weekly Mansfield…
It's hard sometimes to understand the people who are perpetually ticked off by ... well, let's be honest ... anything that doesn't fit their worldview and/or m…
Sometimes you just need a reminder of what life is, or should be, about.
Is anyone else exhausted, or it is just me?
Editor's note: Brenda Looper usually writes her columns on Mondays, and since this Monday was Labor Day, she decided to take a little break. The original versi…
Civility seems to be the word of the moment, but I can't blame some for being skeptical of calls from certain quarters to be kind in light of current criminal …
In summer, I notice I tend to get stuck on the issue of incivility a lot. I get it, it's hot and we're all cranky (frankly, I worry about some of those people …