It’s the most wonderful time of the year, if we keep it simple and kind
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Release Date: 12/17/2024
Why the new lie about the old lie is rattling the loyal believers of lies
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Last week, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced there will be no release of the “Jeffrey Epstein files.” It’s hard to predict when people will have finally had enough. The tolerance level of undesirable traits and behaviors from other humans will vary from person to person of course. And in today’s world of unexplainable group think, a rational understanding of group tolerance is often fleeting. This is not a column that will provide some new theories about what’s in the elusive Epstein files. No, I will never have confidence that the entire truth of that monster’s life will...
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Teaching fewer things leads to a population that thinks less
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Oh, to have existed in a period of time named the “Renaissance,” a French word that means “rebirth.” , “it was primarily a time of the revival of Classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.” The recently enacted biennial budget crafted by the Indiana General Assembly is hostile toward learning in favor of stagnation. The Commission for Higher Education announced last week that six of the state’s public universities are suspending or consolidating more than 400 academic degree programs to comply with the new budget. “The cuts are...
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People will feel the one big, beautiful bill, and it will be ugly
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Every semester, the students in my business writing class are divided up into teams and are assigned a real-life challenge from a company looking to elevate its performance in any number of ways. It’s an opportunity to research the complexities of a market, to create an entrepreneurial solution and to effectively communicate all of it to the company looking to grow. And it’s an opportunity for me. I get to teach them the value of feedback. The worst ideas I’ve seen in my career come from organizations that spend too much time only talking to each other. The habit skews logic and...
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Maybe sexual harassment by elected officials shouldn’t end happily for them
Think About It with Michael Leppert
I spent last weekend in New York, as I try to do once a year, for the primary purpose of seeing the latest hot show or two on Broadway. I’d love to say I am expert at picking the best shows, but the truth is, if a show has gotten my attention in the heartland, it’s a safe bet. “Maybe Happy Ending” first caught my eye with its list of Tony nominations, so I bought the tickets. After my purchase, , including Best Musical. While I was in the city, the political ads were relentless on TV and on many of the digital billboards in Times Square. Tuesday was the Democratic primary election for...
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Three days of shock and awe illustrate an American culture in turmoil
Think About It with Michael Leppert
A quarter century ago, as a young bureaucrat, I had a disagreement with my bosses. Energy commodities markets were going through an historic price spike, and my agency set the final rates customers would pay. I wanted rates to mirror the market to send “price signals” to consumers and provoke a reduction in consumption. The bosses wanted to spread costs over a long period to mitigate “rate shock.” They feared the infinitely possible responses that could come from an angry public. The bosses won, as bosses usually do, and we kept rates flat, and the public remained calm. Governing has...
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Purdue’s breakup with its student paper feels like a gun shot
Think About It with Michael Leppert
I am working on publishing a new book this year. So, I’m spending time with other writers, readers, editors and consultants to make sure the finished product is as good as it can be. While online the other day, an editor wrote: “The purpose of fiction is to ask the audience questions to consider; the purpose of non-fiction, is to give them answers.” I assumed that was a famous quote, because it’s so wonderful, but I can’t find its originator for attribution. “Who said that?” is a question in need of an answer. I don’t ever seem to run out of questions, and neither does...
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Lt. Gov. Beckwith’s nasty warnings about Pride Month are exactly why Pride is needed
Think About It with Michael Leppert
I love June in Indianapolis. School’s out for me. The gardens, flowers and lawns around town are blooming and greening with optimism. And the city is quiet as it recovers from its traditionally hectic month of May. As my favorite performer, David Ryan Harris, sang in concert many years ago, this time of year transforms “slow like the breezes of springtime melt into summer’s grace.” As a dad, I am treated well in June. As a golfer, Indiana’s greens rarely run smoother. As a proud downtown dweller, my neighbors never love each other better. And that last one is all because of ....
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When knowledge is the enemy, greatness is impossible
Think About It with Michael Leppert
In the 1983 classic film, “Trading Places,” Louis Winthorpe III and Billy Ray Valentine are victims of a scientific experiment that is thrust upon them by the elite bosses of a Philadelphia commodities brokerage. Winthorpe is a young, snobby broker at the firm, with all the right credentials and upbringing. He is comprehensively replaced by Valentine, a streetwise but uneducated nobody. The amateur sociological experiment aimed to prove that environment is more predictive than genetics in determining personal success or failure. After the switch, Winthorpe spots Valentine wearing the...
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Braun fails Indiana’s hungry, and the buck stops somewhere else
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Bureaucracy is a word that is often used as an excuse. It is the bogeyman that serves as the source of mysterious and insurmountable odds preventing government from delivering the obvious good and right things to its people. Why are the streets in Indianapolis so horrible? Why is school funding seemingly always distributed unfairly? Eventually, the answers to those questions lead to the faceless phantom, known as bureaucracy. However, sometimes that phantom is identified, making accountability possible for whatever ails us. That’s when we point at an actual person, the sinister...
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‘The Talk’ won’t get us through the evil of ICE’s mask-wearing
Think About It with Michael Leppert
In of the film, “The Hate U Give,” a father is having The Talk with his two young children. It is a common discussion Black families have in America to prepare for the inevitable contact with law enforcement they will face, and how to stay safe in those situations. It is a sad necessity, but a necessity all the same. The movie was based on the 2017 . It was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, though plenty of important things have happened in real life since then. In The Talk, the father is instructing his kids how to be submissive when confronted by an armed aggressor with...
info_outlineI remember when, as a child, this time of year was filled with unmitigated joy. Like Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” dreams really could come true. But as a nine-year-old boy, I never thought to ask Santa for a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle. By the time I was nine, I didn’t believe in Santa, and my best friend already had a BB gun. We didn’t need two.
Almost fifty years later, most of that joy has returned for me, and it’s no mystery how. I really only have two holiday goals. First, as a gift to myself, I keep it simple. Next, all of my “shopping” for others is replaced with simple acts of kindness.
Johns Hopkins Medicine writes, “4 Mindful Tips to De-Stress This Holiday Season,” to describe a plan that can make a difference for many. I don’t teach math, but even I can count to four.
The first tip is to “accept imperfection.” Over the years, I’m glad I didn’t keep track of all the angst the drive for the perfect family holiday caused people around me. Clark Griswold’s failed attempt at it in “Christmas Vacation” is hilarious, yes, but only unusual in the details. Hosting or participating in the “perfect” holiday is a goal fraught with peril.
The crowded house I grew up in was the entirety of my holiday universe then. School would be out for two whole weeks, there was no available room for pesky relatives to stay, and the food, oh the food, was the primary feature of every one of those days. The holidays of my childhood were perfect, right? Of course they weren’t, and even though I remember them as if they were, I wasn’t the one creating them. The adults did.
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