Viewpoint

The end of every school year is a contradiction of excitement and sorrow, particularly for those of us who teach graduating seniors. My seniors are the students I know best, partly because I teach them all year long – unlike most of my other students who are on a semester block schedule – and because the class is set up as a Socratic discussion group that demands a great deal of verbal give and take.

“Horrible customer service.” That’s what the newly fired IRS commissioner averred was the agency’s only sin in singling out conservative political groups for discriminatory treatment.

When I heard that a golfer had made a “joke” about Tiger Woods and fried chicken, I had to double-check to make sure it wasn’t 1997 all over again. That was the year Frank “Fuzzy” Zoeller was asked for his thoughts about Woods’ impending success at the Masters, and he joked about Woods serving “fried chicken” or “collard greens” to celebrate his win. The remark cost Zoeller his primary sponsor, Kmart, and will likely overshadow his athletic successes in his obituary some day.

“The National Aquarium in Washington is going to close. But don’t worry. If you’re in D.C. and you still want to smell something fishy, stop by the White House. They’ve gone from ‘Change you can believe in’ to ‘Changing the story until you believe it.’ ”

Don’t want tolls? Don’t like higher taxes? Take Statesville Road. Oh, and leave early.

At age 19, when I was an assistant scoutmaster, I was expelled from the Boy Scouts of America for being gay. The very group that had taught me the value of self-respect since I was 8 years old now told me that there was something fundamentally wrong with who I was, and am. Confronting institutional discrimination for the first time, I was overwhelmed with sadness, grief and anger.

Among the many things Tim Cook apparently learned at the knee of Steve Jobs, during his long tenure as Apple’s No. 2, was how to create a “reality distortion field.” Or so it would appear after watching Cook, now Apple’s chief executive, testify Tuesday at a Senate hearing on the company’s tax avoidance schemes.

I fully support Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Heath Morrison’s recommendation of a $28.5 million increase from the county for our 2013-2014 budget.

“The decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes,” George Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language,” a prescient 1946 essay that anticipated the political correctness that would befall the English language half a century later.

MUMPO will be my new curse word when I stomp my toe.