I suppose the populace is to blame for such things. If the superficial is what people watch then the superficial is what we'll get. Or maybe the superficial is just cheaper to produce. As I'm writing this I'm enjoying some nice pork chow mien. Those pigs don's scare me. At least not yet. Same with SARS, killer bees, and earthquakes. Crosswalks on the other hand I worry about.
Yes, we should be prepared for such problems as a flu epidemic and we should put resources into being prepared for it. I'm not sure we need to report on it like it's some killer virus like those in the movies. Let's keep a sense of perspective and a sense of how much news space should go to such a thing. Maybe if more news effort was put into how to prepare for the pandemic than reporting on the panicdemic we'd all be better off.
My flu anecdote...
My father rarely missed work because of illness. In fact he probably didn't miss any days most years. One year though he caught a bad flew bug and was at home for a whole week. My mother had a rare cure for his illness. She went out and bought a color TV to replace our black and white. The cure worked wonders and Dad was back on his feet in no time. It's hard to believe that I was a black and white TV kid.
Posts
I totally agree with you regarding the news. Let's face it, its set up to entertain the lowest IQ denominator, and of course the advertisers. As for you not worrying about things, anything, I think not. You are a worry wart. Weren't we all black and white TV kids? Well actually I was a non-television kid for many years! Perhaps that explains my social inadequacies? Cheers, xelA.
ReplyDeleteWow, I'd forgotten about black and white TV, but lived with it for the first 10 years of my life until 1974. I remember the first Sunday night I saw colour fireworks on the Magical World of Disney.
ReplyDeleteBut it was still a few years before my parents got cable. We used to have this antenna on the roof that you could rotate with a little box on top of the TV to get better reception.
Same here! Plus, we could only get CBC. I remember envying my friends who'd come to school talking about Mission: Impossible and Hawaii 5-0, thinking man, why can't we have cable tv too? When I was considerably older and finally caught up with these shows I realized the best thing about them was the theme music.
ReplyDeleteAnd just what has become of the great tv theme songs of the past? A subject for a future blog, Jack?
Hey Mike, for me it was Gilligan's Island in colour, finally! That lagoon, what colours! We had 4 stations in Montreal, 2 French and 2 English. My Grampa lived in the Eastern Townships and had this wacky antenna on top of his roof which also rotated with a box on top of the tv. I always thought he had invented it because that's the kind of grampa he was. The antenna could pick-up exotic locales such as: Burlington, Vermont and Plattsburg, NY.
ReplyDelete