|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The Channel Nine Award for Self Serving Boosterism and Cynical Posturing! |
|---|
| it is unfortunate, Carl, but you're not eligible...... |
|
This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, August 27, 1986. Carl Akers has done it again. Carl just noticed last week that all those missing children were a hoax, and that only 67 had been abducted by strangers last year, the rest being runaways and kidnappings by the other parent. Carl evidently didn’t notice that the Denver Post won a Pulitzer last year for just that story, and that the statistics were always there anyway. Carl slammed the print media for making a big deal out of nothing. But he failed to note the large role his own Channel 9 played in the fiasco. Mike Landis intoning the names of missing children after the news each night. This was watered down until it vanished, but Channel 9 played as big role as any. The grotesque hypocrisy of all three network affiliates in Denver grows by leaps each year. Having fattened up a non-story, they now try to redeem themselves by blaming the print media for getting the nation all out of whack. And Missing children is not the only case of non-story. Every newspaper and television station has a feature about some local hero, or impressive student, or town character. And the painful truth is, these people are – as a rule – neither exceptional nor worthy of emulation. Because a neighbor picks up a phone to call the fire department, or to walk in a door and bring out a child where a chimney fire rages is not the definition of hero that I recall. Nor is a B+ student who serves as a cheerleader and hopes to attend Ringworm Community College after a year in the Coast Guard Reserve. And if I see one more segment on stumpy legged pudgeballs who hope to have a career in dance, I’ll throw up. If the Daily Camera continues to hand out Monday Morning Roses and Volunteer of the Week awards, they may find themselves reduced to giving one to me in the dark future. At the end of the First World War, a German veteran said you actually had to hide to avoid being awarded an Iron Cross. It had lost all meaning. These civilian achievement awards can never be reduced in value because they never had any. In fact, these are just cynical attempts to boost circulation and audience by extending the threat that you and I – if we play our cards right – might someday receive a Channel 4 Youth on the Move medallion, oh be still my heart. This is Gresham’s Law applied to citizenship. Far from being a good thing, it reduces and degrades the idea of silent, quiet public service, or even of mere public existence. The fact of the matter is, most of us are undeserving of awards, and should not receive or accept them if it demeans the actual achievements of others. We’ve seen it happen with college degrees, where many graduates cannot read or write. We’ve seen it happen in Labor, when electricians get double the pay of a teacher. And now we see it on television, where some brown-nosing student recommends his teacher, some aspiring neurotic stage mother wants her child on television, some program manager wants an audience boost in this or that demographic area. It has become, in a word, disgusting. |
| Post your views and reviews on The Boulder Lout Forum. |