Silly News
Last week was one of silly news. Not that the Manafort sentencing memo isn’t important; that guy is going to jail for a long, long time. Not that the arrest of a Coast Guard Officer with multiple assault weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and a hit list of Democrats and media celebrities isn’t serious, but it was way “below the fold” in media coverage. And not that the beginnings of the Democratic race for the Presidential nomination aren’t interesting, and a welcome contrast to “all Trump, all the time.”
But the Manafort document didn’t say much new. And, thank goodness, the Coast Guard Officer was caught before he could shoot up his steroids, and Congress. And the first primary caucus in Iowa is still eleven months away; the Democrats are running an ultra-marathon, not a sprint to the nomination.
And we are all waiting, waiting, waiting; for the real results of the Mueller investigation.
So we got caught up in a lot of “silly” news last week. From the Democrats, we learned the Senator Klobuchar gets mad when her staff screws up, and ate a salad with her comb when they didn’t get her silverware. That this was actually considered “news” might have a lot more to do with the fact that she’s a woman running for office: John McCain’s temper tantrums were considered part of his “charm,” and Bill Clinton’s anger with staff and others was legendary.
McCain’s image was always “crusty,” but Clinton made his political “hay” as an empathetic candidate and leader. That matches Klobuchar’s image as the plain-spoken mainstream Minnesotan; but our cultural politics haven’t moved that far yet, and the media isn’t quite prepared for a woman with a temper.
Back in 1981 I worked for Eve Bolton running for Cincinnati City Council. I remember having long discussions about how important even a handshake was for a woman candidate: too soft and the candidate would look weak, too strong and they would look “overbearing,” too little grip (the grab the fingers shake) and it would look “dainty.” It was a conversation that wouldn’t have occurred to a male candidate, but it was a necessary one for a woman in the political arena. I guess things haven’t changed that much in the last thirty-eight years.
But we did find out that we need Ranch Dressing more than another Democratic candidate.
And last week we had “BREAKING NEWS” from Chicago, with the arrest of Jussie Smollett. He’s an actor in a series I haven’t seen called Empire,and it seems he staged a racist and homophobic attack on himself by guys with red MAGA hats. We really aren’t sure what the reason for this attention-getting action was, perhaps to get a better paycheck from the producers, but it turns out he’s a fake, and really kind of sad. But we got the full play-by-play from the Courthouse.
Of course, the real news in the Smollett story isn’t him, but the impact that his fake attack might have on the next real victims of racism, sexism or homophobia. It makes the case for “it was all made up” stronger, and makes getting justice even more difficult. It falsely bolsters the alt-right case against the Kavanaugh accusers, and other uncomfortable cases that have come to light (R. Kelly, Trump, Cosby, Epstein.)
But perhaps the biggest “silly” news didn’t make the mainstream media. It was an ongoing social media crisis, however, the “anti-vaxx” and “anti-anti vaxx” movements. Parents demanding the right to not vaccinate their children, and others pointing out the public health risk that creates. The “best” of those was a post pointing out that “we” (I guess we must be even older than me, at sixty-two) survived without vaccinations, so why should they protect their own kids.
The inventor of the oral polio vaccine, Albert Sabin, lived down the street in Cincinnati when I was growing up. Polio terrified communities in the 1950’s, no one knew when it would strike and paralyze their children. We were some of the earliest to use the vaccine, and polio is now a disease that has to be explained.
We didn’t get polio; and we survived mumps and measles, chicken pox and whooping cough, scarlet fever and “german measles.” We did, but others didn’t or were so damaged that they don’t get to talk about it. And that’s why kids should be vaccinated.
It feels like the vaccination “crisis” is being amplified by the same forces of social media that influenced the last election; another way to divide American society. It’s hard to imagine that parents are willing to risk their children to diseases that have been forgotten; perhaps it becomes all a part of the “fake news” society we now have to live with.
Maybe it wasn’t such silly news after all.
