By Mike Scinto
Columnist
Appearing in the Kettering-Oakwood Times-Times Community Newspapers
They’re rolling out the big guns for this one. Network news anchors, top reporters and videographers, analysts, politicians and psychologists by the dozens, hour after hour, are showing up on our TV in an almost seamless display.
Have they found a cure for cancer, reached a peace agreement in the Middle East or have the millions of unemployed in our country been hired back to do real jobs in America? Oh no, the huge story isn’t even on our shores. Nope, the big news is William and Kate’s royal wedding!
I don’t know if it’s possible for any of you to care less about this than me. I just don’t get it; or maybe I do. We have become a shallow nation that believes the snake oil salesmen (after all, we elected one to the Presidency) telling us what’s important and what isn’t.
I speak at functions regularly and have found, out of the hundreds of folks I have seen in recent weeks where I brought this up, maybe ten people (male or female) who claimed to have any interest at all in this.
I have had good friends in TV media, national and local (brainwashed as they were), who have seen me on Facebook telling me to lighten up. “We need some diversion from the economy, war and the 2012 election” they lament. And I absolutely agree with them. But is THIS the best diversion we could cook up? I always assumed a diversion was something that briefly took you away from a harsh reality. But this is nearly the entire 6:30 newscast, replacing ANY valid news!
I can understand a two or three minute story, even daily, this week leading up to the “big day”. But the anchors reporting from London; a bit much I suspect.
No, I’ll sit this one out. Maybe I’m out of touch but I don’t think so. I even saw one story, on a cable network that agrees with me I suspect, where Brits, who didn’t care and hoped to escape the crowds back home, decided to vacation in America; only to find it was the only news really being covered on our shores.
I’d be a little more heated but, somewhere amidst the array of reports from London I did see, on one of the Big Three networks, that Lindsay Lohan was arrested for the 4th time and released on bail. At least they haven’t lost ALL journalistic credibility!
