I love all of you

This is my last column. You can all breathe a sigh of relief. I know I will.

I didn’t originally intend to write a farewell column like this, but it seems it is my fate to do so. I would suggest closing the newspaper now if sentimentality disgusts you.

A man approached me last week. As he was standing next to me, he looked in my direction and said, “Eric Cox is a senior majoring in East Asian languages & cultures and chemistry.” He then commented that he truly enjoyed reading my columns. I made some remark about being glad I had readers out there aside from my parents, thanked him and went off to a meeting.

It’s always rewarding to hear good feedback about the things we run here in the op-eds, but that’s not at all the reason why we keep on producing. In fact, I’m quite sure you could trap most of the opinion writers in a cave for a year, and we’d still manage to write 52 weekly columns along the cave walls.

I’m sorry to tell you, readers, but we don’t write for you. We put together these 500-word diatribes about God-knows-what and play journalist once a week in acts of pure self-gratification. Everyone has opinions; we’re just narcissistic enough to want ours to be on display for thousands of people to see.

For years, I thought the Indiana Daily Student was a lousy newspaper. I initially took this job because I thought I could come in and simply blow everyone away. It doesn’t take a genius to string two words together, I thought.

As it turns out, though, journalism is a completely different beast from that to which I was accustomed. It was considerably more difficult than I’d realized to make a solid, fully-reasoned argument that fits space restrictions, constrains detail and remains accessible to all readers. Prose writers, beware the nightmare of journalism.

That’s why, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I’m consistently treated to a barrage of comments from people who seem to think I write these columns on the back of a cocktail napkin at 4 a.m. while slowly rising from an alcoholic stupor. That’s hardly ever the case.

For a piece I wrote last semester on my outrage about people who park along yellow-curbed areas and block emergency access, one commenter claimed she’d “officially come to the conclusion that some people will complain about anything, just as long as they’re complaining ...”

Your complaint about my complaint was truly apt, Common Sense, truly apt.

For another of my columns, this time about tact and cool-headedness in diplomacy with North Korea, one going by “learnmuch?” suggested I “go do some more homework before opening (my) Kim Jong Terrorist lovin trap.” Ah, wit.

This is the kind of feedback I live for. I might write for my own sake, but these comments make it worthwhile to publish.

So, to all of you who have enjoyed my writing: Thank you. To all of you who have hated it: Thank you even more.


E-mail: erbcox@indiana.edu