Yelling at the Media for October 11, 2009

Item: A whip used by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was sold at auction for $56,000 USD.

What I yelled: Great. What bad economy?

Why: Everyone is on pins and needles about the condition of the United States economy. But where strictly luxury and/or collectable items can be sold for that kind of money, I think the thing that we need to worry about least is that the economy is bad. The money is still out there; it's that fewer people have it. Those who do haven't changed their spending habits at all. They don't have to. If anything, they're even more financially capable of living the way they like. It's too bad that, for many of those people who still have way more than enough money to live on, the way they like to live is by depriving others, whether consciously or unconsciously.

By the way? That amount of money would buy three $20 meals per day for two and a half years.

Item: President Obama announces that he will end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the US military.

What I yelled: 'Bout time.

Why: American society as a whole is long past the idea that gays are a negative influence on it. They are an integral part of this society. The last stumbling block has been the government, unusual for a government by the people and for the people. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And some of those free and brave are gay. Time to grow up and accept reality. Can we move on to the vast schools of bigger fish this country has yet to fry?

Short one today. Back next week.

Yelling at the Media

I used to laugh at the family elders when they would shout at the TV or radio in response to information that infuriated them. With my maternal grandparents, it was usually during Chicago Cubs games. Except with them, having a Cubs game on seemed to be the most comfortable excuse for yelling at each other. My grandmother the die-hard Cubs fan would trash-talk my grandfather the die-hard Anyone-Playing-the-Cubs fan and Grandpa would give it right back. Before you start feeling sorry for either of them, though, it's worthwhile to note that Grandpa was a Chicago Blackhawks fan, and Grandma, well, you get the idea. That might help explain my ambivalence toward both baseball and hockey. It didn't seem like either sport was enough fun to warrant that kind of emotional investment. But I digress.

In the midst of a cascade of noise, pre-teen John would come charging into the room and ask what was wrong. They would, with no embarrassment at all, point at the screen or dial (!) and say "Oh, it's just the game," or "Oh, it's just the news." I'd usually roll my eyes and go find something else to do. One summer day, though, I asked Grandpa why he yelled at the TV when no one could hear him. He said, with half a smile, "Whatta ya mean no one? You heard me."

Okay, thirty years later, I still don't quite get that. But I get why he was yelling at the TV that day, even as the years advance on me and I yell at the TV and the radio most days. It isn't that I'm the village eccentric (not wealthy enough). It's just that sometimes I can't believe what those folks who run the news expect us to swallow as truth or logic. Even as my grandfather couldn't understand it forty years ago and he let his frustration out. I'm going to do that, too, and I'm calling it Yelling at the Media or YATM. And here it is for this week:

I heard a radio interview last week with a fellow who had written a self-help book about thinking positively. I'm all for that, but my brand of positive thinking tends to be a little more realistic. As an example of turning negative news to a positive, he cited the example that unemployment increased to 9.8%, but a positive person would turn that to mean that 90.2% of the nation was gainfully employed. Mmm, no. Details of this misapprehension can be found at this FAQ for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our positive friend has committed a familiar error. He has decided that things are better than they are because he wants them to be, but that's just not so. We all must choose to deal with reality, lest we allow it to choose the way it deals with us. Not my quote, but apt nonetheless.

A General Motors VP was recorded last week saying that the best way to insure that GM returns to the status of being a public company (instead of government owned and supported) was to buy GM cars. Hmm. I equate that with a restaurant owner saying that the best way to tell that their food isn't poisoned is to eat it. For myself, I've pretty much decided that my loyalty to any product or brand will be determined by the quality of the public comments of the manufacturer's management. At the moment, I'm pretty much product and brand loyalty free. Sad about US business. Telling and sad.

And finally, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis will be retiring from that firm by the end of the year. His retirement package? $53 million USD, by some accounts I've heard, despite official questions in many quarters about the Merrill Lynch acquisition. I'm so glad we've reached the days of financial responsibility in financial service companies. Nothing funny there. Nope. Nothing. Interesting note: the percentage of that amount that it would take to make me completely debt free? Less than five one-thousandths of a single percent. Need a number? That's .005%. And here are the three ethical and/or moral (your choice) questions that no one in the United States seems to want to answer: 1) Is he really entitled to all that money when so many of his countrymen are going without? 2) Is everyone who has those ridiculous amounts of money entitled to all of it? 3) Why?

Tune in this time next week for the YATM. I have no doubt there'll be more.