TMI = Too much information. The malady afflicting our sensibilities as 24-hour news stations and online blogs add insult to injury to gossip to the point that fabrication clouds fact beyond recognition.
It may have set the record for the longest personal opinion column in the history of printed news.
Encompassing everything from the financial meltdown in Greece to the mood swings of the stock market as 2010 breathed its last, columnist Dave Barry’s New Year’s piece occupied the columnar space on almost three pages in the Athens Banner-Herald.
Barry has been one of my favorites for some years; his tongue-in-cheek commentary adds humor to everyday situations that would be funny on their own merit if they weren’t true. Usually pithy and to-the-point, Dave Barry has perfected the art of inserting humorous zingers to drive home the point that someone in a responsible position has acted in a most irresponsible manner.
His targets often occupying elected seats of national importance, his no-holds-barred approach to making some pontificating politico appear to be little more than a trained circus act contains more truth than mirth though the latter highlights the inane behavior defining their modus operandi.
As a columnist myself, it is a source of pleasure and a means of generating column ideas to peruse the writings of other journalists. Often consisting of commentary on current events, recollections of childhood years, or anecdotes involving family or friends, many columns are limited to somewhere between 500 and 800 words.
The reasoning for that coincides somewhat with the rule of thumb for preachers: If you can’t say what needs to be said in twenty minutes, you’re either repeating yourself or chasing rabbits. Either way, the audience often loses interest and will turn to the comics or begin a mental inventory of all the stuff they have to do once they get home from church.
After the plague of locusts known as the Arnold Family had vacated our house New Year’s weekend and we had finished assessing the damage, it was my turn to stop cooking and cleaning long enough to see what had been going on in the world beyond college football. At first, I had skipped over Barry’s column having mistaken it for a feature story recapping the events of 2010. Laying it aside to read when I had more time, my priority was refocused when Mr. Fix-It insisted I read it right that red hot minute.
Daily global financial crises, twelve international incidents, 63 Obama speeches touting something nobody wants but that he’s determined to choke down our throats, the roller coaster ride known as the U.S. economy, and 17 Joe Biden faux pas later, my eyes glazed over as the reality of the world in which we live had been paraded before my eyes. All this stuff had happened in the course of 365 days, for cryin’ out loud. And the really sad part is that we heard about it as it was happening – at least once in the print media and three-times-an-hour-for-threedays on the broadcast news. And let’s not even get into the commentary programming.
The only thing Dave Barry’s column didn’t address was the proliferation of e-garbage parading as warning e-mails or reader comments for online news stories. Reading between the lines, though, Barry ramped up the spotlight on how much work we have to do to call into accountability those power figures charged with overseeing our collective future.
Add e-mail and internet with round-theclock news stations and their unending quest for the next big story and it’s no wonder we have a culture of junkies whose fascination with knowing it all is rivaled only by those idiots who fuel the internet rumor mill. Rarely does a day go by that my e-mail doesn’t contain a communication about some kid being kidnapped three days ago at a WalMart, some evil lurking in the halls of Congress, or warning about a computer virus contained in an e-mail that, if I open it, will disable all computers of the free world until the Second Coming.
It takes a strong personal filter to wade through all the junk with which we are bombarded in the guise of facts you couldn’t sleep through the night without knowing. Folks are so enamored with finding the next great tidbit with which to amaze their friends with their knowledge of world news that they can’t clean up the junked cars in their own neighborhoods.
I like information. I like to be informed, but too much information can be dangerous in the hands of those who don’t know how to use it. Be informed. Be vigilant. But, for the love of Pete, if you can’t be productive, keep it to yourself.
Helen Person is a Winder resident and columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at helenperson@windstream.net.
