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By
Bruce Bressack
10/16/2003
Boomers
It's us against 'them'. If we don't stop 'them', we're dead......as a society and a culture. And don't say I didn't warn you.
So, "Who are 'them'?" (which is hardly a grammatically precise way of phrasing a question).
Well, today the 'them' is the media who insist upon providing the agonizing and salacious details on everything from Kobe Bryant's sexual "quirks"...to Rush's bout with "prescription" drug addiction.
Sure, it's entertaining (in a "last days of the Roman Empire" sort-of-way). But, don't we deserve better?
There's a real difference between free speech and cheap speech. And clearly, what's being thrown around these days is 'cheaper-than-cheap' speech.
You can't escape it!
And just to be sure we "get it", the media stokes-the-fire of personal destruction and vilification...non-stop...day and night.
To 'them', "fallen heroes" are just fodder for the 'maniacal, 24x7, media-frenzy machine'....little more than 'raw meat', filling-up time and space between those 'paid-commercial-breaks'.
I seem to remember a simpler time - when heroes had faults but no one gleefully and maliciously discussed their personal life......because it was, in a word, personal!
While we can't turn-back-the-clock, we can change the channel when the vile bile begins to flow.
And if we all stop watching and enabling 'them', maybe 'them' would get the idea.
Nah! They'd just keep talking!
Bruce Bressack is a singer-songwriter, producer and freelance writer currently living in New England. He’s a 52 year old baby-boomer, ex-Yuppie, ex-New Yorker, guitar-slingin’, piano-slappin’, finally ‘retired’, television tube lover...
Bruce Bressack can be reached at bbressack@hippopress.com