Lest anyone think a liberal 'blogger is calling for laws about what politicians and media folk are allowed to say, I thought I'd better clarify.
Nope, that's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, it's time we grow the F up. We shouldn't need a law for adults to WANT to behave like adults in public. The law shouldn't have anything to do with it. What we need is for the rest of us to voice it when we disagree with the childish behavior of both our politicians and our big media personalities... or even with that guy in Wal-Mart talking on his cell phone in the diaper aisle screaming the F-word in every sentence!
You know me, I LOVE the F word, but when did it become acceptable for it to be part of every sentence someone's yelling in Wal-Mart?? I suspect it hasn't become acceptable, but rather, we've lost the adult skill of addressing the unacceptable-ness of it. Instead, we childishly stew, letting our anger at it, or at our own inability to address it grow into some hostile seething. The seething is then somewhat soothed when we hear Keith Olberman or Rush Limbaugh complaining about the same thing on the radio, but then hyperbolically calling for some drastic measure - in a PURELY entertainment-esque metaphor - NOT to be taken literatlly! tirade that makes us feel better. But it doesn't really. It just makes us feel less alone in our powerlessness. Then we confuse our own ineptitude with the EIB or MSNBC proposed solution and start believing such exaggerated silliness is an actual solution.
The thing is, the solution is simply, politely, asking the "gentleman" at Wal-mart to please use more appropriate language in public...around your mom, or your children. The solution is for all of us to grow the F up.
Have there been moments when, in the angry aftermath of some ridiculous statement made by a politician that I felt some childish satisfaction at a mean comment Olberman, or Rush made about the comment? Sure, then I remembered I'm an adult, that neither side in that childish spat was getting us closer to solving the issue, and that this particular form of entertainment is nothing more than that. I remembered that when it comes time for me to figure out where I actually stand on an issue, I need to think for myself and try to tune out the BS... the entertainment. Like what Jersey Shore characters, or AM radio "characters" say and actually tune in on what really should matter.
It's no surprise that this has been the theme of the week on The Daily Show. Many fans who stood in line for the free tickets in recent miserable New York City weather this past Monday might have felt a little slighted as the Monday show's entire first segment was Stewart intelligently and carefully explaining why it's not fun to make fun of the news when the news involves the tragedy of the previous weekend. As it was, he probably lost half his audience in that brief speech but it was eloquent, needed to be said, and probably wasn't and won't be heard anywhere else.
Later in the week, The Daily Show hosted Tim Pawlenty, who admitted to having said things in public he later wished he hadn't, but remained defensive as Stewart laid out his plea for SELF restraint. It was as if Pawlenty assumed Stewart was calling for repealing the 1st amendment. He didn't seem able to grasp what Stewart actually said: that we and our politicians should WANT to use speech that made a clearer distinction between them and crazed gunmen or extreme talk show hosts.
Am I the only one saddened by the fact that the only "news" show that's handled the truly important topics of the week with an adult approach and an appropriate and respectful deference and urgency is on Comedy Central?
So, back to the point: Yes, I believe Keith, Rush, Rachel, and Glenn should be ALLOWED to say whatever the hell they want. And, as a legion of idiots, we should be allowed to hang on and repeat their every word. No, there shouldn't be a LAW that prevents this.
What there should be is an adult segment of our population, say those over 17, who are able to see this for what it is, react negatively when appropriate rather than embrace it as the solution to the world's problems, and then to be able to seek more appropriate, relevant, and useful information upon which to form their opinions. They should then act on and voice those adult opinions in grown up ways. We should tell our politicians when their speech is inappropriate and worse, when their actions (or lack of) are ineffective. We should ignore entertainers whose idea of entertaining is simply preying on the ignorant who can't form their own opinions.
The dude using the F word in Wal-Mart only thinks that's ok because as a society, we have agreed that it is. This is in no small part because we hear and pay lots of money for very similar language on afternoon radio and evening cable tv. The initial confrontations of our collective childishness won't be smooth. They will require the MOST adult among us to use all of our skills to do it. But that's what we have to do - it's not legislation I'm calling for.
We should just all grow the F up.
Luth
Out
No comments:
Post a Comment