The 40th Anniversary of Man's First Steps on the Moon
I think we had it backwards. Any rational species would have cured Cancer first, maybe wiped out the Poverty, the Hunger, taken care of a couple other items and then hurtled off into Space. I'm not against space exploration but worry about our own little dot in the Cosmos first.
Walter Cronkite
I know he was a journalistic legend but I got nothing out of him. Very memorable and poignant, him announcing that President Kennedy just died was for me his most classic moment but the Most Trusted Man in America? Who comes up with this bullshit? I think it's because I was born with a bug up my ass but I just don't See Things the way most folks do. Barbara Walters, another one.
The Wendy Williams Show
This supposedly hot hot show has pushed my Channel 9 News past 10 o'clock well into 11 because I have to listen apparently to this happening chick prattle on endlessly about absolutely NOTHING. People in the audience ask for her advice, for example a 28-year old woman stands up to ask if there's anything wrong with her going out with a 23-year old and Wendy all hip says "do him" but I'm thinking what's so radical about a mere 5 year age difference? It's the type of show you find yourself watching about twenty minutes too long with the remote in your left hand and the Christian Brothers to your right and then it hits you like a revelation, why the hell am I watching this?
Sex Tapes
Supposedly there's now one of John Edwards with the lady not his wife but I don't wanna know. The last one was horrible though, Amy Fisher and her fat Italian ex-husband like she's giving him a blowjob and he's squatting there all hairy after he ate too much pasta. It's the kind of stuff if you were housesitting one night and you're all alone and someone left it on the coffee table on top of the gardening book and the TV Guide and there's really nothing at all on TV like Wendy Williams, some lame 2 & 1/2 Men syndicated repeat and some crime show on Ch. 2, you're like you're only gonna watch it for laughs. You ARE gonna pop it in for perusal, not at first, it's only a theoretical concept then, just an intellectual note that it exists and you're aware of it for keeping tabs on the culture but then your robotic arm puts it on the beckoning discholder and it will be rationalized as a comic evaluation to talk about some day around the water cooler should the topic ever present itself and you'll be the knowledgeable hipster but even porno pete is ashamed.
Obama
It's like the man has legislative OCD or something. He's like the person at work handing around a petition, "here here, quick sign this" and you don't even have a chance to read it. If he's doing this much in six months what's he gonna do in four years?? Maybe I'll just be like my cat and sleep it out.
I guess one has to be real old to appreciate Cronkite & NASA. When I was a kid, you either watched B/W
ReplyDeleteCronkite..or Huntley-Brinkley. A half hour..no talking heads, no spinmeisters, no 24 hour 'news'.
If you wanted more depth, you read the paper. Back then, they reported news; if you wanted it spun your way, you did it yourself.
It was novel..the breaking news stuff..Kennedy, moon landing..and us old goats remember where and what we were doing. The whole space program thing was a response,
like most things in those early cold war years, to the Soviets getting ahead of us. You had to be there, I guess. After Sputnik, a lot of us kids got interested in
rockets and I designed and made them in the basement, blew up a lot of stuff, launched some neat ones...and changed my interests from History teacher to chemist.
We like to reminisce, us foggies,
and get misty for the 'old days'..
which were likely no better than
these days, huh?
i like your synopsis......
ReplyDeletecronkite was good - but was a liberal shim just like those of today...some lay the resulting troop deaths following the tet offensive directly at his feet...personally - him and others of the time, share in that mis-managed govt-run war (mcnamara, johnson, et al)....
Cronkite should be remembered for his longevity but longevity doesn't automatically translate into legend in my book. Did Cronkite have his biases like the rest of us? sure, he later became a shill for Planned Parenthood it's just that when I sensed him getting a little of the Michael Jackson treatment I said hold up. A subtitle of this blog could have been "the blog that goes up against conventional wisdom."
ReplyDeletePeople are always thought of more fondly after they die (except when GWB dies there may be dancing in the streets, but time will tell). But unconventional wisdom is a good thing, and as for curing cancer first and ending hunger, seems logical to me but you can't tell those whose passion it is to explore space to redirect their efforts, they just happened to succeed quicker than those who are fighting cancer.
ReplyDeleteBut think of the money involved. When it comes to the government spending money money really does grow on trees I guess.
ReplyDeleteIf you see space exploration as a necessary thing for national security, then you can justify our tax dollars going to it, but giving federal dollars for medical research, well doesn't fall into the defense of our country category in my opinion. Charities help fund reasearch, or if investors want to invest in it, then they should, and then they would benefit when the medical breakthroughs occur.
ReplyDeleteI KNEW I read this somewhere. The other day a column by medical writer Michael Fumento appeared in the New York Post about the futility of pursuing embryonic stem-cell research and he said when a person receives ES cells they may develop into a kind of tumor known as a teratoma. They can be as big as footballs and have hair and teeth!! You know might be Mother Nature trying to tell us something and yet Obama wants to waste millions in a kind of perverted medical deadend.
ReplyDelete