It is
official; I have joined the curmudgeon crowd. I am now an official member of
that group of people that run around bemoaning the ‘signs of the sure
apocalypse’ that are being made manifest every time I tune into AM News
coverage. The first five minutes of pretty much the same across the country,
first, the local station begins its’ “if it bleeds it leads” segment informing
the viewers what latest inhumane act we as people have committed against each other;
then it’s on to the weather where we are assured that the sun did actually rise and barring any unforeseen
accidents, will more than likely set a bit later in the day, then it’s on to
traffic, and depending on where you live, only one of two things will happen,
you’ll either sail through and make to work on time or you’ll sit in some
log-jam and be an hour late in getting where ever you needed to be.
Then it’s on
to the network or cable AM news shows, where it also follows the local formula,
if it bleeds it leads, more weather, more traffic, and then, Hilarity ensues.
It seems that while I have purposely been avoiding the morning news shows like
the plague, they have been racing to the bottom at breakneck speed. For
instance, today I was made aware that if you are a woman who wears high heels
to the office Christmas party and drinks a bit too much, you should be careful
not to run in said shoes, followed by several clips of women running after
busses, trains and\or planes, all the while falling rather undignified on their
faces. We don’t really know whether or not these women were in fact, under the
influence, but I suppose the segment producer made his or her judgments based
on purely scientific criteria. Then it was on to Beyoncé, apparently, a soft
drink company has chosen her to be their ‘ambassador’ by paying her 50 million
smackaroos to adorn their billboards, cans, and wherever else they may find it
fitting. I won’t name said soft drink company not just because I don’t use
their product, they also will not pay me to hawk their wares.
This is all
going on the background while I am reading some very sobering news about the
origin of the Honey Boo-Boo phenomenon when I realize I have missed the boat;
not only about Honey Boo-Boo, apparently some very “serious and important”
people follow her every move, but also about the very “serious and important”
people themselves; I hardly recognized a name.
That is when
I realized that I have joined the “Hey…!!!...Get off my yard…!! Club, complete
with ellipses and too many exclamation points…!!! I seem to have lost my point
of reference in todays’ society.
When we should be spending more time getting
to the bottom of malnutrition and the lack of opportunity for our youth, we are
glorifying excesses; when we should be lifting and engaging our society to
reach for the heavens, we seem to be content in appealing to the lowest common
denominators.
And the
idiocy does not stop there; what used to be a two hour morning show has morphed
into a morning long drudge of cooking, gossip, make-over, more gossip, topped
at last by the late morning news, followed by the noon o’clock news…Whew…!!!
This is the part where I long for only three
channels, that used to actually turn off at midnight or two in the morning,
until the powers that be decided that we needed to know everything all the time
no matter how mindless and mediocre it might be. There are no journalists, only
script readers; there is no in-depth reporting because there is no “bang”, no
hook, and no gotcha.
When we should have been hearing about the lies and
machinations that led us into at least one unnecessary and one extended war,
our attention is steered towards the American Idolization of entertainment. We did
not see coffins for the first seven or so years, and to some extent the
American public was fine with that. No one wants to be reminded that there are
real people dying in many parts of the world.
In many cases we have been led down the road of hero worshiping that has in effect cheapened the meaning of the word. Those
survivors of the many crimes against humanity in the twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries see themselves as people who lived and made their lives
mean something other than just breathing in and out.
Those who survived the various Trails of Tears, and
there have been many, live to tell their stories so that we may learn from
them. The quiet veterans of the many wars don’t puff out their chests and demand
recognition; many realize that they are here because one or many of their
comrades stepped forward and allowed them another day on this earth, another
day to feel the warmth of the sun, and share in the birth of another.
When everyone is a hero, then, no one is.
I believe that by allowing ourselves to be
distracted by the shiny baubles presented everyday by our entertainment media
and their so-called news branches, we do ourselves a great disservicer, and we
learn little and opine much.
The fact that we are still waiting for the next
Cronkite or Murrow, is pretty sad actually, because the ones that are coming up
are learning from the Maury Povichs, the Jerry Springers, the Piers Morgans;
and that is a damn shame.
Happy Holidays, Merry Kwanzaa, Joyful Hannukah, Cheerful Christmas...and Get The Hell Off My Yard...!!!
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