So I was watching Oprah, who is kind of like America’s fairy god-mother- larger than life, I am sure we all would agree- so after she found, remodeled and furnished a home in Chicago for a struggling single mother of ten children- three of her own, seven of her brothers; after Oprah promised to pay for college for all of them, personally; after basketball star Kevin Garnet gave the boys a signed basketball, and followed up with sending Oprah a note which she opened live-on-the-air promising to help her build one house for katrina victims, a month; that is to pay for one house a month for a year; of course Oprah got tears in her eyes, and so did I. I mean think how much she could do for people if she got all of the basketball stars, and all of the football starts too, to do the same.
Well, after all of that, she jumped to the letter she got from the hardworking first grade teacher in a disadvantaged school wishing that her first graders could some day og on a field trip to see the world outside their own impoverished neighborhoods. So of course Oprah treated the whole class to a trip to Disney World.
There they were with Sleeping Beauty and Jimmeny Cricket and of course Mickey Mouse.
And I wondered if they even knew about all of those long ago cartoon characters. But then I though, Mickey Mouse is arguably more real to these kids than, say, the President. I mean, do they think the President is real? For that matter, I thought as they cut to pictures of Oprah having fun on the merry-go-round with the kids, do they think that Oprah is real? Or is she just as real as Mickey Mouse?
What about Walt Disney, was he a real person? Or just a fairy god father of the world of the imagination? Does it matter?
Just thinking about this as I try to write my comprehensive exams on U.S. History, where we are constantly trying to get people to understand what it was really like. Not the pervasive myths about the west, of the gold rush, but what it was really, really, like. But the myths are so pervasive, aren’t they?

So, just thought I would finish with this little piece about myths and realities.


Perpetual student endures dizzying whirl of sudden celebrity
For One Student, a College Career Becomes a Career - New York Times: "The marketing hoopla whipping up around Mr. Lechner, 29, is making it difficult to separate fact from fable about his college career. He has compiled a 2.9 grade-point average and in one semester got straight A's. But in the topsy-turvy logic of the entertainment world, a record of debauchery has become central to his success, and friends say he has taken to exaggerating his Animal House credentials."
National Lampoon is promising to pay his tuition, and the makers of Monster Energy Drink deliver 30 cases a week, along with advertising posters and condoms, to the house where Mr. Lechner lives and parties, in exchange for his endorsement of Monster as "the official energy drink" of his 12th college year.

He has signed with the William Morris Agency, which is marketing a reality television series based on his life at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. And in recent days he has referred to interviews with The New York Times on his personal Web site, anticipating new publicity from this article.