I am happy to
report that despite being exposed to 24 hour cable news on a daily for basis
the past several weeks, I do not have Ebola.
I am not a news watcher, whether it’s the local,” If it bleeds it leads”
variety or the 24 tag team loop of the same 3 stories repeated over and over. Since
I choose not to eat at my desk and rarely go out for lunch, most days it’s just
me and this enormous TV in the break room; the 72” flat screen on the wall is
rather difficult to avoid. Granted the Ebola story needed to be told, though
some of the lead lines just made me shake my head. I just munched on my brown bag
fare of the day, read my book and waited for the dire warning to grab a few
rolls of duct tape and cover my windows with plastic. News in any variety is
basically the use of certain volatile words like, “deadly”, “tragic”, or “ devastating”
to create an emotional response to get you to stop and watch, then sell you a
few pills, the latest electronic gadget , or a car you can look great in while
you drive around collecting cans to help pay for it. Then again, maybe I’m a
bit cynical when it comes to some things. Believe it or not I hold out some hope for the
human race, though that has been tested by the other ongoing sagas filling our various news outlets recently.
The other
stories of course have to do with police involved shooting in Ferguson and the
killing of an unarmed man on the streets of New York. The subsequent protests
are just another example of how everybody loses when incidents like this occur.
A crisis like this hits friends and
families on both sides and we are given a ring side seat to watch. Well maybe
not everyone lost; I’m sure the networks probably made out pretty well, advertisers’
stuff got eyeballed and no doubt several lawyers picked up a few new clients. There
is always money to be made from other folk’s misfortune; somehow a train wreck
has its own special magnetism and we become powerless to tear ourselves away
from the devastation.
I watched chunks
of coverage after 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina and the latter drove me away from
watching news altogether; I felt like a voyeur after seeing people at their
most vulnerable and being firmly convinced that it all didn't need to go down
that way. I feel the same way about the police involved incidents that have
been filling the newswires of late. Ferguson, from what my half ear has heard and
the little I've read, seems to have been wrong right from jump street; inconsistent
statements came from both sides, though it appears to have exposed an attitude that
has no place anymore, which the New York incident showed is not restricted to
St Louis. Based on the response to a few
football players making a show of support, the Police Chief’s office in St.
Louis must have had a stray can of gas lying around and figured he’d thrown it
in.
As a kid growing
up I watched the Civil Rights marches on TV and I thought over time they gave
this country a good start in making some progress in race relations. By saying that I must add a caveat; I’m not
black and I never have been so I can’t speak to what it’s like being rousted
for being black in public. The only thing I can speak to is being stopped for being
long haired in public. It really doesn't have the same social impact; one is a
choice the other is not.
I don’t have
any answers, though I wish I did. No doubt the answers are within our grasp, I
just wonder if anyone is listening.
Photo source - www.me.umn.edu
.
