Patrick Cirenza – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 21 Feb 2014 07:26:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Patrick Cirenza – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 On Opinion Articles: Part Two https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/20/on-opinion-articles-part-two/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/20/on-opinion-articles-part-two/#comments Fri, 21 Feb 2014 07:26:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082572 Opinion articles are invaluable. They are the written embodiment of freedom of expression. Throughout human history, men and women have died for the right to freely voice their thoughts. As a result, anyone, regardless of gender, race or creed, can be the author of an opinion article. The author can write on any subject, openly […]

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Opinion articles are invaluable.

They are the written embodiment of freedom of expression. Throughout human history, men and women have died for the right to freely voice their thoughts. As a result, anyone, regardless of gender, race or creed, can be the author of an opinion article. The author can write on any subject, openly praising or criticizing anything from a government action to the food quality of university dining halls.

This right, which is taken very much for granted here on our sunny campus, is a foreign and unfortunately unattainable concept for a substantial number of people around the world today.

Some of you may remember I wrote an article with a diametrically different opinion on opinion articles last week. Some of you were quite angry about the last article. Some of you undoubtedly will be displeased with this one.

At this juncture, I would like to remind you of how it is my beautiful, inalienable right to change my opinion as many times as I like and fill the pages of The Daily with my hypocritical thoughts as long as the editorial board will have me.

Nevertheless, I concede that it is important to explain why I capriciously changed my mind from last week. In doing so, I hope to convince a few of the generous people who actually peruse my articles (read: blood relatives) of the worthiness of my point.

Though there are many reasons why writing an opinion article is a worthwhile endeavor, I shall list what I believe is the primary reason—pleading restriction by word count and late submission time (also I am sure that what I miss, the zealous commenters of The Daily website will duly strive to mend). I submit that the authors of opinion articles have a unique ability to challenge conventional wisdom and extreme viewpoints. Their writing pokes holes in the dangerous assumptions of others and stimulates conversation about issues that need to be discussed.

For readers, reading an opinion article is a good use of time because, contrary to my assertion last week that they are just being lazy thinkers, it forces them to evaluate their opinions relative to those of the author. The readers’ reward for trekking through a newspaper to the opinions section is the development, reinforcement or revision of their previous beliefs and their growth as a functioning member of society.

My ultimate recommendation to all consumers of this fine paper is to occasionally make a point of reading the opinions section (please note that I wrote this of my own free will and was not compelled in any way to suggest this by the managing editor of opinions). Inform yourself by reading widely, form your own opinions and then relentlessly question them—you will live a happier life.

A note on the byline: I did not write last week’s byline because I did not realize that I had one. Though I have a tendency to be willfully insubordinate, I claim to have a cause. Thus from now on my byline shall be:

Patrick Cirenza seeks to provoke his readers to thought by avoiding the provision of insipid, mundane opinions. If he does, please email him at pcirenza@stanford.edu or directly request The Daily to fire him.

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On Opinion Articles https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/14/on-opinion-articles/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/14/on-opinion-articles/#comments Fri, 14 Feb 2014 10:38:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082400 Opinion articles are worthless. If anything, they detract from the fabric of society. When I read a newspaper, I never read the opinions section. Why would I? Opinion articles are the value judgments of others in which facts are selectively used, ‘I’ is a permissible pronoun, and reactionary extremism is required to garner any notice. […]

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Opinion articles are worthless.

If anything, they detract from the fabric of society. When I read a newspaper, I never read the opinions section. Why would I? Opinion articles are the value judgments of others in which facts are selectively used, ‘I’ is a permissible pronoun, and reactionary extremism is required to garner any notice. The only prerequisite for writing an opinion article is the urge to get on a soapbox and opine. In the words of Trish Hall, Op-Ed editor of the New York Times, “Anything can be an Op-Ed.”

Yet in almost every newspaper in the world, from high school papers to The Wall Street Journal, there is an opinions section. To understand why, it is necessary to view the issue through the lens of supply and demand. I completely understand the supply side – authors of opinion articles are the type of people who love hearing their own voices. Why not see it in print? As long as vanity remains a part of the human psyche, I suspect there will never be a shortage of opinion articles.

What is more of a head-scratcher is the demand side. Why do people take time out of their busy days to read purposeless articles like this one? Today, I am contributing nothing to you or your intellect. After reading this article, you will neither be any smarter nor more informed than you were before you read it. I therefore urge you to stop reading. With the exception of the poor copy editor who has to revise this, you have my full blessing at this point to put down the newspaper and walk away.

I posit (for those who are still with me) that people read opinion articles because they are lazy thinkers. Opinion articles are pre-packaged arguments and deductions, ready-made for appropriation and subsequent use at cocktail parties, in prison and in other circumstances that necessitate conversation for the sake of conversation.

As a reader, if you agree with an opinion article, you can mindlessly annex the argument and claim it as your own without too much strain on the brain. It is possible to think even less if you disagree because of how easy it is to disparage an article as simply wrong without asking why.

On balance, this seems to be an unhealthy practice. A robust mind should always seek to form fresh opinions. That is why I advocate that you, the astute and perceptive reader, should read every other section in the newspaper and develop your own thoughts. Leave the opinions section, a desolate wasteland of vacuous convictions, to those who are unwilling to ponder or reflect long enough to come to their own conclusions.

If you have made it this far, I hope you share my opinion that all opinion articles are worthless and, indeed, make our society as a whole worse due to their sloth-inducing nature. In the height of hypocrisy, however, I intend to perpetuate the problem and will continue writing opinions for The Daily. Thus, with the exceedingly low bar I have just set myself, I will now begin my weekly column in the opinions section.

As columnists go, Patrick Cirenza is the quintessential rebel without a cause. Convince him that his job actually has meaning at pcirenza@stanford.edu.

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