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My local paper is asking for unpaid community columnists and asked for a 720 word editorial. Please tell me what you think.
The Phone in the Dryer
Several years ago, a local radio station held an on air contest where callers put items in their dryer, the idea being that the noisiest contestant would win. It was one of the funniest radio bits I’ve ever heard, and I ended up pulling off the road because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t see. Coins, toasters, etc., were flung into spinning machines, and someone actually threatened to throw in a cat. The winner of the contest was brilliant – he put the phone itself into the dryer.
Memories of the contest flooded back to me in the middle of the night last week as I sat up in bed, awakened again by uneasy thoughts bubbling up through my subconscious until it forced my consciousness. I’m often troubled in the night lately, everything seeming out of kilter in a world that no longer feels familiar or safe. It causes lo ts of insomnia, and I fill this time by reading, by watching the TV news and C-Span. I’ve become a news junkie, searching almost frantically for some elusive clue, for something, anything, to settle my nerves, to provide a familiar landmark in this world I no longer recognize. I wonder if it’s me, if I’ve changed, if this is simply a sign that I’m aging, some unanticipated adjustment to the march of time. But then my two adult children, my older sisters and younger brothers, my teenager and my 71 year old mother chime in to agree that they feel off balance too. And while I appreciate knowing that I’m not going nuts, I’m left searching for a reason for our collective loss of equilibrium.
And then I had the dryer epiphany.
When I was a teenager, the Watergate story broke and it was hard for me to accept what Nixon, whom my parents supported, had done. But we all understood that burglary and obstruction of justice was wrong – both Republicans and Democrats alike - and so he was forced to resign. While it was an awful time, a national consensus developed, and clear notions of morality dictated a painful but necessary result. There was some generally agreed upon certainty in the facts, certainty in the morality, and certainty in the outcome.
Today, I feel that no collective certainty exists in our democracy in any political context, not even so much as a simple consensus on what constitutes the actual facts of any disputed matter, much less agreed tenets of accepted morality. And I think I know why. In the past, news consumers were aided in developing at least a consensus on the facts by an excellent media machine which operated under uniformly stringent journalistic standards. Journalists understood that their role was to assist citizens in sorting the wheat from the chaff, and they did this daily. News formats were predictable, usually starting with “while the Democrats say “x” and the Republicans say “y,” our independent investigation reveals that “z” really occurred.” Journalists would end by reciting the verifiable facts and listing reputable eyewitnesses. Thus, “we, the people” had lots of real help in sorting what was real from what was an illusion.
Today, even in the more reputable media outlets, truth telling is often replaced with a “fairness” standard. Fairness is achieved by allowing opposing sides to present their case, and journalists do little or no independent fact checking. Making matters worse, there is often a disparity in the amount of time and respect accorded to the differing sides based upon the undisclosed prejudices or biases of the journalist involved. Sometimes neither side is telling the truth, and on less trustworthy cable stations, “journalists” openly join the fray and talking heads shout angrily over each other.
So, the phone (a metaphor for the media’s collective communication system, if I’m being too obscure) is in the dryer, and we can’t hear anything but the noise. Instead of staying out of the din and helping us sort it all out, our present media system is not only conveying the noise to us unfiltered, they are the noise.
No wonder we’re all floundering for balance in this new world of conveniently amorphous facts and competing moral certainties.
And I think they may be mixing the whites with the colors in the washer too.
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