When I was a lad, back in 100 BC... "back in the day"... the family would get together around the radio every night at 5:00 PM to listen to the evening news. It was Edward R. Murrow, or Lowell Thomas or Walter Cronkite, and they had the news. It was thirty minutes of the straight skinny on what the haps were at the time, follow by discourse between my parents with their opinions and what the news portended. We young ones were allowed to join in the conversation as it wore on. Through this process, of course, we became good citizens; these were subjects likely to be discussed in a school Civics or American History class the next day. We would then sit down as a family unit to dinner where the conversation might continue.
Now, I know you might think I'm blowing smoke, but I'm not.
Today, it's different. It's become a paradox: We're too busy with life to pay attention to the news about our government and yet, the number one concern we all have in our lives is government.
The half-hour national news followed by 30 minutes of local and state news, sports and weather is gone. What this time period has morphed in to is an entertainment and opinion hour with talking heads and screaming matches. We're no longer the family unit engrossed in watching or hearing the events of the day; it's a rare occasion when we all sit down to eat together and when we do, we're all too involved in texting to pay any attention whatsoever to what someone else might think. It's a day and age where, with all of this communications technology we have, we don't really communicate... a time when we could literally go to war and half the country wouldn't know about it for a week.
We need to reorder our lives, restructure our routines and get our real priorities straight. If our government really is our main concern, we need to put down the damned cell phone and discover for ourselves what is really going on in our government. While we're at it, we might just look in Wikipedia to find out what a Senator and a Representative is and, if it's not too much to ask, why our government is so dysfunctional.
Oh... as a matter of information and edification, Harry Truman is no longer President of the United States. Please pass the mustard.
That's MY AMERICAN OPINION submitted.
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