When I was a kid, the world was a busy place.
In 1968 ...
Nearly 17,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam – about 50% more than it had been the year before or would be in 1969 and 9X what it had been as recently as 1965.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were killed.
Jackie Kennedy - our former first lady - married Aristotle Onassis - a Greek shipping tycoon.
The Black Panthers engaged in shoot outs with Oakland police as one of many deadly racial conflicts across the country.
The ’68 Olympics was rocked when American gold and bronze medal winners raised their fist during the awards ceremony in the symbol of black power. (Did I mention that there was an Olympics?)
Intel was founded.
NASA launched Apollo 7, the first manned space craft and Apollo 8,the first time any humans saw the dark side of the moon or orbited around it.
Yale announced that it would admit women.
Nixon won the presidency.
Does anyone else think that 24 hour news channels were invented about 40 years too late? Given that TV news was one hour back then, the ratio of remarkable events to actual remarks must have been about 386X what it is today.
3 comments:
Some of the 24 hr news channels don't actually cover more news and some of them are simply propaganda spewing outlets. I'm assuming you've seen "OutFoxed"?
The SD City Library system has 16 copies, but not the CV one. Figures.
It's nice to have news available 24 hours each day, but there is seldom enough real news for more than a few minutes.
I think they should do "news" on the half hour - about 10 minutes - and then recruit independent experts to put together 20 minute talks on a wide variety of topics, to fill the remaining 40 minutes of each hour. Let the experts decide what they want to talk about, and keep inviting the ones who are interesting.
You posted yesterday about experts. If we heard more from them we might value them more.
Strange that I wasn't even born and yet, I am have been aware of most of these events having taking place.
And the world is still busy, even busier and bound to get exponentially more busy. On a millisecond basis, important stuff happens all over the world that we never learn a thing about. The hurdles are of course our lack of time, the extraordinary amount of "news sources." Language hindrances and our selective interests and inclinations.
Here's what I absolutely hate though, the extreme focus on terrible or tragic events. It seems as if two thirds of news is comprised of the horrible things that go on. Little focus given to the good or uplifting news that might be out there. Almost makes you believe that nothing good ever happens. I tend to be proactive in finding my news rather than letting it find me.
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