To Much Noise

 I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely happier for it.

                                                                     Thomas Jefferson

 

 First of all I would like to issue a public apology to my friend & boss Mark Reaman for my vicious rebuttal to his observations on the death penalty. I know now what set me off.

 The press.

 For weeks & weeks Colorado newspapers had devoted their pages to the life & death of Gary Davis. Interviews with Davis’ daughter, Davis ‘ son, {himself in prison in Texas for murder or something}, interviews with the victims, stories about other killers in other states, story after story of the most humane & profitable way to end someone’s life. Stories of lethal injection versus electricity or gas. Opinions on morality. Opinions on murder.

 Headline after headline on Davis himself. Huge headlines GARY DAVIS DIES next to the tiny headlines, John Denver Dies, or James Michner Dies. Now both Mr. Michner & John Denver left this world a better place than did Gary Davis, yet the press sees fit to glorify the creep for simply the way that he died

 We didn’t punish this guy, we made a hero, a martyr of him. If the press had their way they would have made a rock opera out of the death of Gary Davis.

 Crime & punishment is all it was. How dare the press assume that we the reading public only  relish tales of degradation & despair? Mark was right about the human spirit being burdened by this thing. Not the act itself but the way it was presented to us day & night, week in & out like we had asked for it & actually were sitting around the living room cheering on the executioner. The press made me no better than a dirty voyeur to the whole sordid affair. Something I never even asked for.

 I apologize Mark, I snapped.

 So I have quit taking the paper for two reasons.

 1. I don’t want to be counted as the drooling masses that salivate over the human misery stories that these journalists dig up.

 2.They quit delivering it...must not have paid the bill.

 

 Speaking of Bill. Maybe some of you caught the news flash of Bill Clinton & his hearing aid the other day. Now here’s a story manipulated by the press for instance.

        CLINTON GETS HEARING AID  BOOMERS REACH THE GOLDEN YEARS

In one felled swoop the press, or which ever idiot wrote the story, has announced that an entire generation now has one foot in the grave. Clinton was applauded because he, a very public figure, had the guts to admit that yes due to years of rock music, & Paula Jones lawyers, he had a hearing problem. Now it was all right for the rest of us ‘Boomers’ to admit we were one step from that big Dead concert in the sky. If I hadn’t of seen that piece I would have had no idea that I along with my entire generation was all but pushing up daises...heck, I had felt fine that day.

 In all the articles written about Bill & his ears not one journalist came out & said maybe Bill Clinton got a hearing aid because he couldn’t hear. Maybe Bill decided to get this hearing aid before he gave away Alaska, or attacked Australia, or admitted he found Ms. Jones attractive. No, Bill Clintons tiny little hearing aid, according to the press, condemned millions of healthy people to the home.

                                        BOOMERS REACH MATURITY

 Instantly categorized by the press, stripped of any individuality, the second you open a paper. Generation X’s, Boomers, Dead. Doesn’t it just make you feel special. Who are these people the press, & just why is it so important to them to have labels and statistics by which they view the world? Can people really think in massive generalities as the papers would have you believe?

 I started thinking about the categories I had fallen into in my short life. The labels I’d been labeled, the statistic’s I’d become, starting by my birth:

 7 lbs 4 oz, male, Caucasian, Gemini, 541-54-2262, cute, ugly, terrible two, pre-schooler, student, below average student, slow learner, adolescent, pubescent, juvenile, juvenile delinquent, teenager, disenchanted youth, young man, older brother, football player, injured list, hoodlum, grandson, creep, son, average, virgin, boyfriend, nervous, acne medicine user, drivers license #54678, accident victim, grounded, class of 69, single, hitch hiker, transient, 1A, disgruntled youth, 4F, poor, gringo, rich, Passport # 563492, Ugly American, malaria victim, hippie, redneck, 1099, Visa # 645783*90, phone number 50267233667, mortagee, baby boomer, insured #789965, local patron, box holder, consumer, bullshitter,  married, double mortgagee, visa # 764863904, checking account # 345276, yuppie, puppy owner, non-conformist, subscriber # 4578987, building permit # 67589, La Maze class graduate, “Daddy?”....

“Huh?”

 I had been on the floor playing trucks with my two year old son, one eye on the evening news, when Christo noticed my distraction. He stood up, padded over to the television, snapped it off & returning to ‘trucks’, summed up my problem in one short sentence.

“To much noise.” he said.