Common Courtesy

I was reading quietly in the living room the other day when I heard voices coming from the kitchen.  Several people, men and women, were all talking at once.  Their voices kept rising as they became more frustrated, until they were stridently shouting in an attempt to make their points heard.   I called out to Rick.  “Are you watching the news?”  Yep.

Now, I’ve been known to sit at the kitchen counter and get in on the interview.  “Be quiet, you bozo, and let the other person speak!”  Maybe we’ve replaced the old Friday night boxing matches with the news programs.  We no longer watch two men duking it out in a ring, but enjoy a panel of supposed experts presenting “the facts” with volleys of sarcasm, indignation, exaggeration, whining, rationalization and justification.   Sometimes I expect to see them pointing fingers and sticking out their tongues when they’ve finished throwing their tantrums. 

When did “news” come to mean asking questions with the answer buried in the wording?  Give me both sides, please, without the blatant or subtle commentary.  When did journalists stop going on a quest for truth, and become opinionators?  “You’ll have your two minutes” really means you have about ten seconds before you’re going to be interrupted and if you can’t talk fast enough before you’re interrupted again – oh, well.

We are left to shift through the flotsam while trying to get to the bottom of things.

I’m beginning to understand why Rick gets annoyed whenever I interrupt him.