I am an unabashed child of the novelty. I have memories of sitting on a coffee table in my parents' living room in the apartment in Elechester that we lived in when I was still an only child, watching the Dinah Shore Show on a teeny-tiny black and white television. "See the USA in your Chevrolet." Dad had a two-tone Plymouth two-door coupe, but I still sang the song.
Seventy years later, and I'm surprised by the wizened visage I encounter in the mirror every morning. Strange days indeed. So little of what I grew up with has survived, except the memories.
Now, we're a culture, nearly worldwide, who, because we have all these television and cable channels and means of communication, feel compelled to fill them with something. There was a time, when our kids were very young, when the idea of a 24/7 news operation was novel.
Many of us wondered what would go on a channel like that at all hours of the day and night. At some point, as convergence began to close the distances between one form and another, news devolved into noise, not that we really noticed.
Now, there's not a lot of nutrition in any of what we watch-just empty calories. When the President of the United States speaks and it takes longer than one commercial break (three and a half minutes), we start to twitch. We surf until we find something somewhere, even if we've seen it already, rather than attempt to stretch our attention span and focus. We have so much freedom of choice for information, we yearn for freedom from choice.
Later this month, we'll mark the 56th anniversary of the First Man to Walk on the Moon. However, by the time we reach that milestone, it will be competing for our attention with the upcoming (in August) anniversary of Woodstock.
Which one was history? Which one wasn't? How do you decide what is history? And what can a poor boy do, except to sing for a rock'n'roll band 'cos in this sleepy London Town there's just no place for a street fighting man.
Sorry-I was channeling Mick Jagger, but I digress. I wondered eons ago if the news coverage of OJ and AC's speeding Ford Bronco was the end of an error. Now I know it was the lead car in the circus caravan, and I'm forced to acknowledge "This ain't no technological breakdown, Oh no, this is the road to hell." Makes me wonder what happened to that long-ago coffee table.
-bill kenny