Curmudgeonly Musings

News Flash! Anthony Weiner is an Idiot.   

‘Nuff said. What’s interesting (to me at least) is to think about how different today’s news climate is compared to 50 or 75 years ago. The media didn’t excoriate Kennedy for his dalliances. They didn’t even photograph FDR in his wheelchair. But now anything salacious is considered “news.” 

And the media – the children of Hamelin – follow Sarah Palin’s huge ‘non-campaign’ bus everywhere waiting for the next dumb thing she’ll say so they can report it because that’s the kind of stuff people want to hear.

As a Forbes columnist wrote earlier this week, “Is anyone embarrassed by this?  Is anyone embarrassed that we now have a TV game show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, where contestants let the world know what they don’t know?” 

It’s the dumbing-down of America. But whose fault is it? The media wouldn’t feed us this stuff if people didn’t eat it up. The media make us stupid. One author sums it up this way: 

The problem with the media has become a chicken-and-egg question. It delivers crap to us; the crap mesmerizes us (i.e. it generates high ratings); the media gives us more, and – oops – we’ve all become dazzled and distracted and unfocused. [Lisa Bloom, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World.]

I haven’t watched local news programs for at least 20 years, and I seldom watch national news any more either. With help from CNN, The Weather Channel gives a good review of current events at 6 a.m., and skimming the front section of the NYTimes or Wall Street Journal plus a few minutes of NPR or CNN at the top of any hour is about all the information one needs. Who cares about the rest of the stuff masquerading as news? Just move on to the sports page. (See my posts back in February and March about the media, Marshal McLuhan, the movie Blowup, etc.)

Speaking of Dumbing-Down

It was prom season recently. "Glee" had an entire episode on it, and the NYT had a story about proms for adults, of all things. The headline read, "Second Shot to Have the Best Night of Their Lives." Their best night! Really?

All over the country young couples like this one spent hundreds of dollars for clothes, corsages, limos, etc., in search of that elusive "best night." Gag me! I thought proms were stupid when I went to them (credit peer pressure for my going), and I feel even more so now. And proms for adults? Puh-leeze!

 

Ya Gets What Ya Pays For

Here's another curmudgeonly perspective: people who live in swamps shouldn't complain about water. Sure they got flooded out in Morgan City and Houma and other towns in the downstream parishes of Louisiana: that's what they get for living in a flood plain. They should be thankful they weren't washed away years ago, which they would have been but for government efforts at flood "control." (When will we ever learn that Nature always wins in the long run?)

And While I'm At It

All the folks who got flooded and hit by tornadoes or scorched by wild fires, and all those who will likely feel hurricanes' wrath this summer and fall ... where will they go to seek assistance? Washington of course. So much for the Reagan/Tea Party mantra, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."