Why Do We Need to be Shrill?

I’ve noticed recently that the weather announcers have started reporting predicted temperatures as wind chill figures, in many cases never predicting actual temperatures.  Wind chill measures are not universal, and their intent is to indicate what the temperature at the predicted wind speed, minus the assumed speed of the general movement of the person, would feel like on the exposed skin of a person.  While this smacks of subjectivity, there have been some efforts at instrumental measurement of the factor.

More interesting to me is the media’s apparent need to report more extreme temperatures than plain old dry bulb air temperatures.  This represents just one more case in which shrill, or hyperbolic presentation, has become more common than calm, or pacifying, presentation.

Recently I’ve watched a bear try to eat Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant; I’ve watched heads exploded in Thirteen Hours; I’ve listened to accounts of a machete butcher in Columbus, Ohio; and I’ve watched the political debates of both parties.  No elements of our media are immune to the tendency to increase the distance between the experiences of ordinary life and the tone and tenor of their stories.  Why is that?

Is the competition for our attention so great that only the most outrageous have a chance of gaining it?  Are we, in fact, drawn to the most bizarre, heinous, and extreme stories and reports?  Have we become so indifferent to ordinary stories that we pay them no heed?

No doubt there are those reasons and others that I can’t imagine. As I write this, days after the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the President has announced that he will do as one would expect him to by making an appointment, and the President of the Senate has done as one would expect of him announcing his unwillingness to confirm a  nominee during an election year.  The commentators on all networks and cable channels are promising a “battle royale,” “a fierce political fire fight,” and the like over what will simply be another election year stalemate surrounded by righteous pronouncements on all sides.

One must wonder if the impact of this incessant escalation of anger, violence, and the extreme in the media that surrounds us day by day plays some role in the apparent increase in angry, violent, and extreme behavior we witness more commonly.  I’d suggest that by bringing stories continually framed in the extreme into the common vernacular the media outlets are major drivers of a growing callousness when regarding the extremes and increasing inability to reach consensus through ordinary discussion.

I suspect I’m just showing my age when I long for the days of Walter Cronkite, and other real journalists, and predicted temperatures expressed in degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius without the subjective overlays of wind chill and heat index factors.

Busted at the Border

Yesterday I returned from Thetford Mines, Quebec.  Thetford Mines was once the world’s largest asbestos mine site.  The countryside there is a moonscape of giant piles and ridges of dark gray gravel and mine tailings.  It’s a bit reminiscent of Iceland’s dark gray lava.  But this is not what my blog today is about.

Clearing Canadian Customs on the way into Quebec was a brief, fairly pleasant matter.  Where are you going?  Where are you from?  What will you do in Canada?  How long will you stay?  Have you been here before? Have a nice day.

Returning through US Customs after a nice visit to Thetford Mines proved to be a truly unique experience. I pulled up to the window where a woman stood.  She had very red hair with each hair surely exactly 1 ¼” long.  She said sternly, “pull up to the stop line."  I complied.  I smiled and greeted her as I handed over my passport.  Smiling didn’t seem to be in her repertoire of facial expressions; no greeting was returned. 

Without ever looking at me she asked, “where have you been?”  Thetford Mines on business. “What business?”  Pellet boilers.  “Do you buy them or sell them?”  Well, both really.

By now she had opened the backdoor of my car and was unzipping my suitcase.  I guess that’s OK, and there was nothing for her to discover that would be problematic.

“Did you sell any?” No, not on this trip. “Hey, what’s in that garbage bag back there?”

I laughed right out loud when I recalled forgetting to take the garbage from the back of the Jeep to throw it in the dumpster before leaving for Canada the day before.

“Garbage,” I said. I laugh about ‘most everything, so I laughed as I told her of my wife, Elaine’s, habit of tossing the garbage in the back of my car before work and my frequent failure to remember to put it in the dumpster until it smells or an inordinate number of flies appear.

She was incensed that I found this humorous.  “This isn’t funny.  You won’t find it funny when I send you back to Canada.”  I began to imagine myself trying to go back through Canadian Customs and trying to avoid explaining that I had to go get rid of my American trash.

The back door of the Jeep opened and “Red” began rummaging through the garbage in the several day old garbage bag.  “This is disgusting.”  I’m sure it is; it’s several days old.  “It’s mostly potato and carrot peels; those are OK.”  Jesus, we can import some garbage but not other garbage?

She resealed the bag.  “This looks all right.  If I’d found Clementine peels I would have sent you back to Canada.  If you take those out of the country, you can’t bring them back!”

She handed me back my passport, and I drove off laughing like a fool and feeling ever so much safer.