Dan Rather Visits St. Olaf

        On Thursday, April 28, I was lucky enough to go hear Dan Rather speak in Skoglund Auditorium as the featured Spring Speaker for the Political Actions Committee.  I was surprised to find myself, throughout his entire speech, thinking about Bellah's "Paying Attention" and couldn't stop making the connection between what he was saying and "Paying Attention".
          One of Mr. Rather's focus points was that news has evolved throughout his lifetime from being what is important, to more entertainment focused.  He encouraged us to find the news worth reporting, and he defined news as something that someone else does not want anyone to find out, but someone does find out and reports it.  This made me realize how much people are not paying attention to things worth paying attention to.  In class we discussed how we can get distracted from the things that really matter in the nation.  This is so true with news.  We pay attention to the Royal Wedding, instead of the deaths from tornadoes in the south.  We pay attention to whether or not Obama's birth certificate is released to the public, instead of what's going on in Syria and Afghanistan.  Mr. Rather emphasized Bellah's point that we have gotten distracted from what really matters, and that it is my generation's responsibility to turn news back to what really matters; we need to distinguish between entertainment and news that holds a heavy weight for our nation and our world.