So here I am, trying desperately to get home from a pleasant business trip that has suddenly become the Nightmare From (insert place where it doesn’t snow or freeze over here).
We’re stuck in Cleveland trying to fly to Erie and we’re stranded by mechanical issues.
That’s on top of the past 18 hours being grounded by a powerful Midwestern storm that rerouted us from Cedar Rapids through Minneapolis into Cleveland.
That same storm was now following us east and was once again bearing down.
Already flights heading west were being cancelled one by one.
Passengers heading to Detroit—Sorry.
Pasengers waiting for Denver—Nope.
Passengers looking to go to Saint Louis—Too bad.
Flights east were still getting out so we hurried to find the nearest television, believing that as broadcasters we possess special super powers to read a radar image.
We breathlessly ask the waitress to change the channel so we can see for ourselves if tornados will soon have us calling for Auntie Em.
“I’m sorry but the bartender says we can’t change the channel because other passengers are already watching TV.”
Disbelieving, we turn our faces upward. What could be so powerfully compelling as to render the possibility of impending doom irrelevant?
And there it was; the helicopter image of a vehicle carrying Paris Hilton to her court hearing where she would tearfully learn her 45-day fate.
Of course.
It was on May 19, 1999 when I used this space to lament the fact that people would much rather be entertained with their news than be informed.
The analogy was green beans and candy; how, like children, we need one but want the other.
The question asked then was, “Are we acting more like children these days by throwing away the vegetables of our public discourse for sugar coated entertainment?”
How little has changed.
We can blame the 24-hour news channels that attempt to put SOMETHING on all the time.
There is that.
We can blame the reporters who don’t fashion serious news in a package that can inform as well as keep our attention.
There is that, too.
But we also can’t avoid looking at the person in the morning mirror, the person tired of the world’s perils by day’s end, the person who could use looking at another life so chaotic that the one we lead feels somehow more at peace.
It’s a comforting thought.
But like those stranded passengers in Cleveland that day, using celebrity flameout to ignore life’s storms do not make them go away.
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