Scattershot to the head
“I hate scattershot commentaries more than anything” – occasional Daily Campus columnist Bill Snyder
Hey, I hate them too, but it is currently 5 p.m. and I have been sitting in front of this computer for two hours trying to think of something to write. Unfortunately, very little has happened in my life for the past week and the daily news isn’t interesting me. Tomorrow morning I may have a brilliant idea for a commentary (which I will promptly forget amid my mad 20 minute rush to class), but for right now, those of you who read the DC on-line summer issues are stuck with this.
My first instinct was to write about all the wacky controversy surrounding (formerly) high accolades that have been handed out recently. For instance, Mick Jagger is about to be knighted – apparently at the request of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who played in a band in college that covered Stones songs. (Why can’t we have politicians like this – ones that actually acknowledge and champion their youthful indiscretions? President Bush may have smoked marijuana when he was younger, but you don’t see him appointing Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter as poet laureate, do you?)
The funny thing is that Blair is probably the only person who actually wants Jagger to become “Sir Mick.” On the one hand, there are those who oppose Jagger’s knighthood because his tendencies to avoid charitable work, father illegitimate children and date younger women somehow don’t gel with the acceptable persona of a knight. On the other hand, there are those who oppose Jagger’s knighthood because becoming part of the establishment undermines everything the Rolling Stones stand for. And then there are those that oppose Jagger’s knighthood because he hasn’t recorded a good song for the past 20 years. And then there are those that oppose Jagger’s knighthood because they feel they have to oppose anything that seems like a remotely popular decision. And then …
That last group of people are probably the same ones that wish Padre Pio hadn’t been raised to sainthood. Pio, if you don’t know already, was the Italian monk who bore the stigmata on his hands and feet (self-inflicted acid wounds, if you believe some of the nay-sayers who questioned Pio during his lifetime), had miraculous healing powers that reputedly work even after his death and was very, very popular and revered during his lifetime. He was given the status of a Catholic saint on Sunday during a ceremony conducted by Pope John Paul II, who once approached Pio seeking a cure for an ailing friend. Banned from saying the mass during his lifetime, the only real recognition Pio received previously was as a kindly, bearded figure gracing thousands of Italian refrigerator magnets. Hey, in my opinion, thousands of people already considered Pio a saint, so canonization was simply a small step. Besides, this world needs a few more saints, a few more people using religion to justify serving other people, a few less people using religion as an excuse to declare war and blow things up.
Speaking of blowing things up, the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in has given us a break from worrying about dirty bombs long enough to retread the reasons why we distrust the government and hate the media. Not that there’s much to retread. We already know Nixon was a bad president. Journalism majors have heard approximately 55 million times Bernstein and Woodward’s warnings about source confidentiality and putting information into context. We’ve already seen all the footage that CNN (a network that didn’t even exist at the time of the break-in) has decided to rebroadcast and reiterate. Let’s not even bother with the tired clichŽ#233; that “we must learn from the past, or it will repeat itself.” Practically the only reason we’ve decided to bring up the subject of Watergate again is because we’re still all wondering who “Deep Throat” really was. And God knows that once somebody tells us, we’ll still refuse to believe that we’re hearing the truth.
Sometimes I wonder why we even bother recognizing the knighthood of an aging rocker, the canonization of a popular dead guy or the anniversary of a tired historical event at all. Why do news and opinion seem so scattershot?
“Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian military activist.” “Sharon rejects idea for interim Palestinian state.” “Castro promises major protest of U.S. policies.”
Yes, that’s right. It’s because we’re sick of hearing about all of the “important” stuff that’s going on in the rest of the world.
