The Daily Gamecock

Issue date: 2/14/08 Section: Viewpoints

Fourth-year English student

The end of a relationship is always difficult to bear for those with glass hearts.

Brad Leake has shattered mine.

On Feb. 12, soon after midnight (because I always check for new Leake columns on dailygamecock.com), I read Brad's "Dear John" letter, or should I say "Dear Gamecock." It was written with the same moving conviction that Brad instills in all of his column topics, from abortion to the Iraq war to abortion.

Brad took a bemused look back at the rhetorical name-calling readers used when they wanted to accuse Brad of rhetorical name-calling. Their insults are not worth repeating, but one thing is clear from their slings and arrows: not one of them has witnessed Brad in a suit, tie and bowl-style haircut containing the unified moral strength of a divided nation.

Brad stood strong then against cutting, running and drawing a line between people and fetuses. He stands strong now in the aftermath of a breakup that stood so close to Valentine's Day it practically blew a kiss goodbye from the departing train.

I wish I had Brad's strength. Instead, I am left with a set of liberal values that leave me all alone on Valentine's Day, even as they tell me to admire the hedonism of others.

Some speculate that Brad left out of impatience for the company The Daily Gamecock keeps. How often has the left-leaning community here ostracized Brad like a clique of statuesque volleyball players giggling at a cool, collected geography whiz?

Others predict and wish Brad to find further editorial positions, as if he left The Daily Gamecock to pursue some sort of "trophy newspaper." Such slander could not be further from the truth. Brad's motivations are of the most right-wing variety: he got a job. He is Icarus, learning to fly in the expansive world that awaits him, while I am the Minotaur, a half-human, half-liberal creature destined to wander aimlessly in the labyrinth of left-wing contradictions without his guiding light.

While some would call Brad's subject matter repetitive, there is a virtue in how he hammered similar points every week. No matter how one felt about his silky smooth approach, his refusal to let go of Iraq and fetus' rights showed that he gave a damn. It was not enough for him to write about them once per semester; they were issues that would always be relevant both to him and America until they were resolved. In today's media environment that shuffles its news cycles to the point that nobody remembers the events of last month, Brad wrote about what he saw wrong with the world, even when the topics didn't appear in the latest headlines.

Now Brad won't be in the headlines, and there's something new wrong with the world.

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