I’m surprised by surprise, I guess. A hot ticket earlier
this week on cable was the Fox News conversation with former Special Operations
Senior Chief Petty Officer Robert O’Neill who has come forward as the Navy SEAL
who shot and killed Osama bin Laden. I have always
assumed it wasn’t a Christmas or Easter seal, so I appreciate the Senior Chief
clearing the air on that.
What’s intriguing I think is the murmurings within and
without the military on a Code of Silence that may or may not have been
violated/breached/ignored by the sharing of operational mission details and
notes by both Matt Bissonnette and O’Neill.
And yet. We have a social network for predominantly
pictures of the food we eat. Then we also place photos of ourselves, eating the
food in the pictures, on another social network and still a third one to
exchange comments, caustic and otherwise, over both the food and our behavior in
posting the pictures in the first place. I'm as guilty of the same egregious narcissistic stupid stuff. More than once I’ve Facebooked pictures of my Barkley
fries from Phillys. Why? Because.
That's the scale and scope so now let me frame the question (to which we both already know the answer): Is there anyone who seriously thinks I’d keep silent about my role, assuming I
had one, in something as big (‘epic’ as the kids say these days; I don’t know
what they call Homer’s poems, Iliad and Odyssey, unless it’s ‘boring’) as
Osamapalozza?
We have become exhibitionists harnessing the convergence
and connectivity of technologies and ideology to send one another grumpy
cat pictures and every kind of selfie imaginable. I do not and cannot pretend
to be angered or outraged by the electronic detritus that we all have a role in
creating.
I dive into the stream and muddy the waters with the same
unheeding, single-minded need for self-aggrandizement as anyone and everyone
else. Hell, you’re ankle deep in the “dig me” pool of self-admiration right now
or did you think this was being made possible by a grant from somebody as a
public service?
Five years ago, people like The Kardashians were an
aberration. Now they’re the norm and we have become them. A broadcast network
ended up cancelling the most self-referential TV show perhaps so far in
broadcast history because we didn’t need to watch it, we’re living it. No one even tweeted about it, or showed a picture
of cast receiving the Heimlich maneuver when told of the cancellation. How sad, no visual.
With so much information available, ignorance today is a
deliberate choice. And our arrogance in celebrating that ignorance is just
another signpost on the road of perdition. No
need to dress warmly.
-bill kenny
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