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Media-bashing is a lot of fun. I enjoy doing it myself, although I must confess that it's not as entertaining as watching other people do it.
After some comet watching and eclipse observation on Sunday night, I turned on the news and saw a demonstration in Boulder, apparently organized by Rocky Mountain Media Watch.
They were complaining about media vultures
hovering around the People's Republic, which is fair,
although the Media Watchers apparently had to rely on the
vultures to get their message out, so that those of us in
the dark hinterlands could be enlightened.
As the tape rolled, a Mediawatcher explained that all this focus on the JonBenet Ramsey murder means that the media aren't covering things they should be covering -- environment, economy, education, etc.
Now, I won't pretend to be an expert on coverage of the incidenting of JonBenet, but I don't recall seeing a single word about it in the journals which normally deal with the environment, our economy, American education and similar important topics -- magazines like the New Republic, National Review, the Nation, the New York Review of Books, Slate, the Weekly Standard.
But every time I stand in line at the supermarket, I see the lurid front pages about the Ramsey case -- the Globe, the Star, the Enquirer, etc.
Despite what the Mediawatchers seem to think, these publications would not be devoting their coverage to national educational performance standards or greenhouse gas emissions if they weren't covering the Ramsey case.
They'd have their writers working on three-headed calf clones, UFO abductions, ten-day miracle diets endorsed by celebrities, apocalyptic millenium predictions and similar topics that fascinate millions of Americans.
You'd think that an organization called Media
Watch
would actually watch the media, at least enough
to know the difference between the National Enquirer and
the National Review.
To move on, spring has sprung, to the extent that my daughter in Gunnison reports bare pavement in some sunny places.
This means it's time for some spring cleaning here, disposing of the stack of potential topics that never grew into full columns.
· If Frances McDormand didn't get the best
actress award last night for Fargo,
then they ought
to close the Academy. People kept telling me I should see
Fargo, and I resisted -- most movies people tell me I
should see, like Schindler's List
and Dances with
Wolves,
are depressing and thought-provoking. I want a
movie to entertain me -- if I want to think, I'll read a
book, and reading the paper, especially when the
legislature is in session, provides a sufficient amount of
depression.
Finally someone explained that Fargo is a really sick
black comedy, like Serial Mom, Dr. Strangelove, Heathers or
Natural Born Killers. It's right up your alley, Ed. You'll
love it.
I did, and McDormand was wonderful.
· Any day now, we'll read about somebody
accidentally strangled by computer cables, especially in
this multimedia
era. Something got disconnected here
the other day, and on just one computer I had to contend
with: power cord, keybord cable, mouse, telephone line to
modem, null-modem cable for dealing with an old Tandy 100
laptop, SCSI cable, parallel printer cable which goes to a
switch box with two more cables, monitor cable, network
coax, speaker wires and some audio in-and-out
connections.
Also there were some wires which didn't seem to go anywhere, perhaps left over from earlier projects, but I was scared to remove them, lest they be necessary for something I've forgotten about now but will need later.
This is scary.
· This is also Women's History Month. Last month was Black History Month.
I understand the rationale for both -- our traditional histories neglected many people's contributions. So every year, I try to honor both months by going out of my way to reading something appropriate -- The Autobiography of Malcolm X or She Won the West, for instance.
But when survey after survey shows that most U.S. high school students don't even know what century the Civil War occurred in, let alone anything about its causes and consequences, then isn't it time for an American History Month?
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