The Movement You Need…

Things I don’t tell my wife

My wife, Shelley, is a kind person - perhaps the kindest soul I’ve ever gotten to know intimately. Frankly, we are very different people and she’s far more consistently pleasant than I am. I’m outgoing, gregarious and less even-tempered; she’s a reserved, consistent and calming influence on me. She’ll never be the one quick to shake the hand of every person in the room, but she’ll always be very observant and perceive a lot of things that I’ll miss. Her counsel is priceless to me, and as I write this I feel a bit guilty for not thanking her for it more often. Knowing her, being with her and growing with her has, I believe, made me a far better person than the one she met seven years ago.

I think it is our contrasting basic natures that feeds a lot of what I put into my writings in this blog and various other written forums in which I participate: She simply would rather not know about or discuss what we call current events in great detail. Too many of the reported artifacts and results of human nature we call “news” are off-putting to her. If the terrorist is in our neighborhood she wants to know about it, but if it involves clashes of civilizations in some distant sand-pit that have been going on since Abraham begat Ishmael and Isaac, I know to spare her the details.

Our commitment to each other, building our lives together and raising our daughter gives us plenty to talk about and work on as a couple and a family. We each bring our unique strengths to bear in rearing our daughter. For instance: Very soon, my wife will be the one most intimately informed about the daily details of our four-year-old’s school days; I’m already trying to make sure that Federal intrusions like the insipid “No Child Left Behind Act” don’t render her part of a generation in which all public school children are molded into equally inept imbeciles.

We’ll both be working toward the same ends by different means while sharing equally in Katie’s successes and disappointments.

My name is Bob, and I’m a Newsaholic

Since the age of six, I’ve had a “need-for-oxygen-level” urge to be on top of the news. I think it would be foolish, and probably a bit cruel, if I were to spend much time engaging Shelley in conversations about things in this world that people do to each other. So between my blog posts, essays and conversations with my more rabidly news-hungry and opinionated friends, my 40-year addiction to the “whos, whens, whys, wheres and hows of what’s happening” is satiated.

The relationship between standard communication, news reporting and public-opinion-making has always facsinated me. I studied, worked and took pride in earning my degree from one of this nation’s most acclaimed colleges of journalism and communications. I chose my study path in part because I wanted to know more about the process that created and fed my addiction. I must note that my Dad is responsible for getting me hooked because we had subscriptions to more magazines than most doctor’s offices.

Today, it saddens me to note that my pride in being associated (albeit remotely) with the professsion of journalism has diminished in recent years and continues to do so.

I have a growing disillusionment with the practitioners of the craft I studied in college. If things do not change, I truly believe the mainstream media is either doomed or will eventually produce content fit only for a clientele that gets its kicks from immersion in an intellectually immoral sewer. What passes for “objective reporting” these days is too often laughable. Why should I have to read several different reporters’ takes on a particular story before I can hash out enough of the truth to feel I’m not being sold a used car by a greasy-looking guy in a plaid sport coat?

In short, here’s my diagnosis:

The disease of Political Correctness, which is rooted in Marxism (not exactly a hotbed for promoting a free press) has permeated nearly every nook and cranny of the collective intellect that used to comprise a much more responsible, ethical and honest media fraternity. It’s OK for most reporters and editors today to publish or broadcast defamations of Christ and denigrate traditional American values, but it is a firing offense (or worse) to even quote a well-versed authority that nearly every major military and terrorist world threat today has a common thread.

And Allah forbid they publish cartoons.

News outlets no longer publish complete descriptions of even the most violent criminal suspects for fear of offending someone; I’m sorry, but reports that note “he’s an 18 to 22 year old male of average build last seen wearing jeans and a blue shirt” don’t help the public at all, they insult it. Crime report information gets printed by law enforcement and posted accurately in its entirely on the wall at your local post office, but your newspaper editor either doesn’t think enough of your intellect to level with you or is being shaken-down by the Politically Correct voices in his head.

Is A New News Day Dawning?

I’m hopeful. Very hopeful.

The advent of the Internet is a boon for those of us who crave news and want it delivered free from the shackles of Political Correctness and unflavored by the opinions of people who consider themselves experts because their faces regularly appear on the covers of People Magazine and the National Enquirer. More recently, the Blogosphere has begun to play a crucial role in the giving us alternatives to an increasingly left-slanted and anti-American fourth estate.

So I have a lot of hope the unofficial Department of Misinformation will be either repaired or replaced within my lifetime so that my daughter and her descendants can once again depend upon the sort of free press our Founding Fathers had in mind.
Whenever I begin to doubt my distrust of today’s media, I’m reminded of this:

“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses” - Vladimir Lenin

And I proceed iwith my thought processes and actions from there. I think that blogging is going to be a big part of the coming change for the better, and I’m tickled pink to have this venue to be a part of it!

Tags: communications, current events, human nature, no child left behind act, Political Correctness