Mama Weer All Crazee Now!

Politics! Again? Yep. I just can't help it as we are in an election year, in the midst of unprecedented partisan impeachment and people seem to have lost their minds.

This morning as I was looking at social media posts and comments, I couldn't help but think of the old Slade song, "Mama Weer All Crazee Now." We are and I think that needs to be the theme song for 2020, because when it comes to voicing our opinions on politics, that crazy ex-girlfriend comes out in all of us.

Now I am no paragon of virtue and I certainly don't pretend to be. I have my own political views and opinions and yes, the closer it gets to the election, especially with all this impeachment stuff going on, it does get harder and harder to not verbally explode all over the place. My saving grace is a private social media political page where it is all about politics and therefore verbal explosions are expected. Still, from time to time I can't help but make a post on my personal page or that of a like minded friends when the political craziness gets to much. Other than that though, I try to keep my personal Facebook page focused on the positive, because honestly, there is still much good in the world....we just currently have to look a little harder.

I think the saddest thing that has come from this new political era that we have come into is the brash idea that there is only room for one opinion and that if someone has other opinions, that it is somehow your right to "stalk" them into seeing things your way. It appears to be part of this new world of entitlement. You are entitled to your opinion and beliefs but no one else is. Again....yes, I have plenty of opinions and from my view, my beliefs are correct, but I am not entitled enough to believe that I am 100% right all the time and that there aren't other sides and view points to any given issue or topic. I am always interested in hearing respectful opinions. They don't necessarily change my view, but they do make me think and possibly even understand why others come to the beliefs and opinions they have. It's called being an adult who has respect for others whether I agree or not. Sadly though, many have lost the ability to accept that others can disagree and still be worthy of respect. While I know many with this current view, one in particular comes to mind.

It is easy to understand in this day and age that younger people, especially millennials have trouble accepting others views, after all they are the generation of thinking that they are the center of the universe, therefore they are right about everything from eating tide pods to the belief that they are somehow entitled to all things free. It is however a little surprising, not to mention off putting when you have a grown adult who is my age, acting with this same immature outlook. Now don't get me wrong, believe as you will, but when you are trying to force your beliefs on others, as someone who is supposed to be an educated and mature adult, then there seems to be a deep seated need for either attention, to be constantly right or simply to harass those who think for themselves and not as you.

There is a person I have known many years who seems to be falling into the millennial maturity well into their 50's and I seem to be their target for stalking or harassment or possibly it is just as simple as they need to be the loudest voice in the room. Whatever the case, I am kind of at a loss. This individual and I have never been what you would call "friends," but I have been friends with members of their family. At one time in fact, I had quite a bit of respect for this individual as early on, they had to make some tough choices in life. As adults we have been social media friends and although our politics are polar opposites, I have enjoyed their posts and comments on mine, simply because you can learn even if you don't agree. Recently though, this person has taken to coming to my social media and trying to call me out for my posts, political or otherwise. Of late, it almost feels like a stalking situation, where this person just waits for me to posts just so they can tell me what "horeshit" or "crap" my post is.

Now, I usually can keep my inside voice in check and am respectful to just about anyone. Not too long ago though, I did fire back pretty heavily at this person on one of my posts that they decided to critique with all the tact of a drunken sailor on leave. I will never blatantly insult a person, call names or be hateful, but pushed far enough, I will bluntly tell you what I think of  your post and your position. I did just that. I am also not a back down kind of person. If you start something....I will finish it. It apparently pushed buttons on this person that I had no idea about and opened the door to them having to comment on the most absurd things on my page. Depending on my mood, some days it amuses me and other days, I am just perplexed as to why this person would waste precious time in such a silly way.

Another friend and I were laughing about it the other day and she asked why I didn't just unfriend this person? What a great question. For some reason, I almost feel that maybe I'm the only one that will spar with this person. Maybe that is what they need, just conversation....good, bad or indifferent. We all know they old saying, "For some, bad attention is better than no attention at all." Now some would say that this is reaching on my part, but is it? You would think as much "BS" as they think I post, that it would drive them to the point of simply unfriending me. Heck, I have been blocked for a whole heck of a lot less, and yet there they sit....watching, waiting and ready to reply. As Dr. Phil always says, you stay in a situation...even a bad one, because there is some payoff in it. Obviously this person and I are both politically crazy enough, that we get something from this whole little polar opposite dance.

The funny thing is, I am not the only one going through this. A couple of other "out spoken" friends of mine, have their own version of this dance going on with political opposites too. What the heck is wrong with us? Has politics brought us to the point where we bait, stalk and spend precious time playing stupid back and forth games while our friends watch to catch the next episode of, "Who bested who?"

I can tell you that writing this was extremely good therapy. Reading back over it, I don't feel good about myself as a human being on any level right now, as I am as guilty as this other person for allowing the silliness to continue. Yes, Mama.....weer all crazee now and admitting that is half the battle. The other half is changing back to who I know I am deep down. I can't change anyone but me, but I can change me and how I act and react to silliness.

Sometimes you say more, when you simply say nothing at all. We'll see if I am capable of that. And with that....I'll leave you with this:

"And That's The Way It is"

"And that's the way it is." This was CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite's famous nightly news sign-off for years. When you heard it, even as a kid, it gave you sense of security and familiarity, like somehow Cronkite's reporting of the news would not only keep us informed but also keep us safe. You also had the belief that if Cronkite was reporting it, then it was as up to the minute as it could be back then and that it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We trusted Cronkite to come into our homes every night and tell us the good, the bad and the ugly of what was going on in the world, but mostly, we trusted that he was telling us the truth. It was definitely a simpler time.

I think it was a mixture of growing up with news journalists and anchors like Chet Huntly, David Brinkley and Cronkite, and my love of writing that set my once desired career path when I was pretty young. I wanted to be a news journalist. I liked trying to see the world through another's eyes and I wanted to give people the truth that they might not get from any other source but me. Yes, I had grand delusions about what journalism was like and what it was destined to become.

As a young and naive college student from a small town in the mid west, my freshmen and sophomore years of going after my journalism/mass media degree were far more of an education than I ever dreamed they would be. Yes, there were those pesky prerequisites that we all had to have, but a couple of pieces of my writing allowed me to get into a couple of upper journalism classes ahead of schedule. It was in one of these classes that my journalism dreams died. We had a professor that at the time I despised and blamed for killing my dream, but in retrospect, am glad he did. He drilled into us that journalism was not about us, telling our stories the way we saw them. No....it was about us telling the stories the way our bosses saw them. We were told to forget humanity, feelings and sometimes even the truth. We were told that we would be given stories to research and report on, but at the end of the day, the producer would have the final say on what we actually reported. It was made clear to us that we would have to check our emotions and even our ethics at the door in this career, because our careers would rely on how much we were a team player and how willing we were to tell the stories we were told to tell.

This particular class started out with 60 students. By the end more than half had dropped the class. I have no idea how many journalists eventually came from this class, but I do know that I was not one of them. This professor had quite proficiently and permanently killed in me the desire to ever be a journalist. Now please, let me preface this by saying, I know quite a few journalist. Most are really good people with ethics and integrity, but trust me when I say, it took some of them years to find a job where they could face themselves daily in the mirror and a couple simply took the name they made for themselves in journalism and became bona fide writers of stories. Their stories. I commend them highly.

Sadly, the days of Cronkite's comforting sign-off and ethical journalistic style have been replaced by 24 hour drive-thru news. No longer is the news about quality, but about quantity. Who can get it out the fastest, put the best spin on it and who can make it the most sensational. In essence....it has brought us to the birth of "fake news," which is now a thriving commodity.

If you are a person of any years, then you will remember when we had three major news sources. While in competition with each other, they all brought their own special journalist or type of reporting to the table and the country was pretty much divided in thirds as to where they got their news. And funny thing, if you watched your local news on ABC, then chances are....that is where you also watched your world and evening/nightly news too. We were also a country of loyal viewers to whichever outlet we chose. And while we were usually used to our anchors being stoic purveyors of the news, there were times when we got to see the humanity behind the professional facade, like when President Kennedy was assassinated or when President Reagan was shot. They were a breed we rarely see anymore made of ethics, talent and a desire to get the truth to the people.

I honestly believe journalism within the news media began to change when big money began controlling news outlets and thanks to cable tv, big money began buying and promoting 24 hour a day news. We suddenly went from world news approximately twice a day for 30 minutes each, to world news 24/7. Who knew there was that much going on in the world to support such a thing?

It has always been a belief that those with money and those in government hold the ear of the news media, meaning that they have always had some sway in how the media reported. Examples of this were back in the day of movie studios with big money, basically owning their stars. The media were often paid a pretty penny to look the other way when a married star was seen out with someone who was not their spouse, when an unmarried starlet became pregnant or when an openly gay star was kept tightly closeted. Another example was when Kennedy was president. It was well known by those in his circle and his office that he was carrying on at least one affair, but somehow this was a well kept secret by the media and not until after his death was his extra marital life made public. Unfortunately, these closely guarded media secrets are child's play compared to modern day media. Back then they weren't lying, they just weren't talking. Now a days though, they are lying, misleading and rushing to judgement without facts.

With the beginning of big money media outlets and 24 hour news, no longer was it just three big names clamoring for viewers and ratings. Suddenly CNN came to play and eventually MSNBC and FOX. They were all big media backed by big bucks and everyone of them wanted a substantial share of viewers and the ratings. In my humble opinion, this was the beginning of the end for real news and real journalists. News was now a commodity and it was being sold to the highest bidder any way they could sell it.

Now jump ahead 40 years to 2020. Most things are supposed to get better with time and age, but the news media and news reporting simply have not. The news media has sold their soul over and over and allowed themselves to become a laughing stock with unprofessional journalists, stories that were rushed for headlines only to find out there was no truth in them and in the last decade, the news media has admittedly become politically partisan, leaving out bipartisan stories or twisting the stories giving them a partisan slant. We have had well known and once respected journalists such as Brian Williams, Jayson Blair and Dan Rather, falsifying information and concocting stories based in conjecture or sometimes based in nothing by lies.

Today though, the worst problem we seem to have with the news media is the partisanship of the media since 2012. You would have to be blind or completely delusional to not see that the news media has been squarely behind the Democratic party. While the Republicans are often chastised for their wealth, it largely seems to go unnoticed that much of the money behind these news corporations come from the pockets of multi-millionaire/billionaire Democrats. It only makes sense that a Democrat, or anyone for that matter, who puts millions into a "business" is going to expect that their agenda both political and otherwise be carried out. Those Democrat $$ also drift into the pockets of lobbyist, senators and not surprisingly if the truth be told, an ex-president or two.

Throughout history, money has talked and in today's Democrat owned and run news outlets, it speaks volumes. Examples of this are sensationalized stories of race riots, gun stories and a boy wearing a Make America Great Again hat at the United States Capital. Down played or completely left out in these stories where fair and equal facts of the other side of the story. These race riots were caused by people rushing to judgement and fanning the flames of unrest without having all the facts. While you will hear all day every day about the people who illegally get guns or steal guns from family members and try and shoot up a mall, school or church, you seldom hear about the law abiding gun owner who stopped a shooting or kept a shooting from escalating because they themselves were carrying. And CNN as well as others have hopefully learned a valuable lesson about jumping to conclusions and out and out making up stories to fit their political agenda as they are being made to pay Nick Sandmann for trying to ruin his name and character.....without fact one to substantiate the allegations.

I think a sad truth that many of us are starting to realize though, is that just like back in the days of Cronkite, there are those that trust CNN, MSNBC and the other major outlets. They believe what they are being told every minute of every day. Unlike the days of yesteryear though, where all three outlets basically reported the same stories with the same basic facts, today there are many outlets, some major and some maybe even more factual but much smaller, at the touch of our fingers. We also have a library of research sites from the government to local information with our phone and our computers. We are not just stuck with the word of one outlet, and yet many refuse to fact check or research. Some won't even read beyond the headline and you can bet these news sources are counting on that.  If CNN, FOX or quite sadly.....social media says it.....then of course......it must be true. This is how fake news grows and this is how it gets into the impressionable and sometimes stubborn recesses of our minds. It is a brainwashing of half truths, lies and agenda driven propaganda that we the people soak in like a sponge and repeat and share as if gospel.

While yes, this is all my opinion, it is also based in fact. Anything I have said here can be researched and quite honestly, I hope you take the time to just do that. In fact, I hope you take the time to start doing that with a lot of "news" stories that seem to have a one sided feel, because you can bet, there is always another side which might give you a more even, fair and factual view of the story. And aren't you kind of tired of letting big money, big news media and social media do your thinking for you?

So there it is. I guess I am rather glad that I took the path I did. I would never have been happy having to write what I was told and my career would have likely been over before it even started. I am kind of a rebel like that. Yes, I would much rather be here writing "my" truth and knowing at the end of the day, I have always been as honest as I could be and as ethical as I could be, with my soul still in tact. .And that's the way it is.