{"id":1945,"date":"2007-04-24T22:48:45","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T22:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/god-bless-roger-ebert.html"},"modified":"2007-04-24T22:48:45","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T22:48:45","slug":"god-bless-roger-ebert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/god-bless-roger-ebert.html","title":{"rendered":"God bless Roger Ebert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good for him:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival. I\u2019m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc.<\/p>\n

Frankly, my dear, I don\u2019t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s talk turkey. What will I look like? To paraphrase a line from \u201cRaging Bull,\u201d I ain\u2019t a pretty boy no more. (Not that I ever was. The original appeal of \u201cSiskel & Ebert\u201d was that we didn\u2019t look like we belonged on TV.) <\/p>\n

What happened was, cancer of the salivary gland spread to my right lower jaw. A segment of the mandible was removed. Two operations to replace the missing segment were unsuccessful, both leading to unanticipated bleeding.<\/p>\n

A tracheostomy was necessary so, for the time being, I cannot speak. I make do with written notes and a lot of hand waving and eye-rolling. The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding. If all goes well, my speech will be restored. <\/p>\n

So when I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes.<\/p>\n

Won\u2019t be hiding illness<\/div>\n

I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what? <\/p>\n

I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.  <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good for him: I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival. I\u2019m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc. Frankly, my dear, I don\u2019t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out. So let\u2019s talk turkey.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGod bless Roger Ebert - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/god-bless-roger-ebert.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God bless Roger Ebert - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Good for him: I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival. I\u2019m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc. Frankly, my dear, I don\u2019t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}