We've become an entertainment-oriented culture.
Our national discourse is dominated by show-business references.
Our political debates are now formed by broad dramatic constructs - hence Red vs. Blue, or Conservative vs. Liberal, always capitalized by the people trying to make some political point, instead of some reasoned arguments about policies or non-policies, based at least partially on facts.
Subtlety in debate is the first casualty of a sound-bite culture.
None of this is news if you've been paying attention.
Much amusement
Author and academic Neil Postman first brought it to the country's attention in 1985 when he published his still-fascinating and entertaining book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death."
Postman's contention, that the emergence of television and other visual media as the new cultural currency, surpassing printed matter, was dumbing down American culture, has been all but proven since, now that we have the internet to add to all the other "instant" news sources that distract us from forming complete ideas before we speak.
That's why even a non-threatening explosion from a semi-active volcano is news for two days - you can see the plumes well from all the news helicopters.
But other things of far more lasting importance are happening in back rooms and legislative chambers down at that other capital, Olympia.
The boys and girls at the Legislature have been busy.
Some good sense has been shown in some instances by those we elect to govern. In other cases, reason does not seem to be winning out.
On the good-news side of the equation, a proposal to re-register every voter in Washington state died in committee, as did a legislative proposal to hold a revote in the state governor's race.
Turn about is...
Isn't it odd how the same people who called Al Gore a poor sport for contesting the disputed results of the 2000 presidential election for a few weeks now act as if curtailing the brief gubernatorial career of businessman, not statesman, Dino Rossi is the biggest crime since some Dutchmen cheated the Indians out of Manhattan Island for $24 worth of trinkets.
Or drove a good hard bargain if you believe in voracious, no-holds-barred capitalism, which you've somehow confused with "freedom."
I didn't vote for Chrissie, the current sitting governor, so don't write me a crayon letter talking about Liberals, please. It's just something I noticed.
In other news from down South where Puget Sound begins, there's once again a bill heading to the floor of our state's Legislature that would make it a traffic infraction to talk on a cell phone while driving.
Senate Bill 5160 is the pet project of a Federal Way legislator who proposes it year after year. It makes too much sense to fail year after year, yet that's what it does, year after year.
Nobody who walks around Broadway for lack of a car, or simply because walking is good for you, would dispute this. The angry drivers rushing through crosswalks against the light are still out in force, but they have been supplanted as the number-one danger to pedestrians by those well-meaning clucks and cluckettes who are always jabbering away when they should be concentrating on where they are going and whom they almost killed.
Unfortunately, this bill is likely to die once again in Olympia. Makes you wonder how many legislators talk and drive. Another bill that makes perfect sense but can never get out of Olympia as law is House Bill 1515, which would ban discrimination against homosexuals in housing, jobs and insurance,which seems like common sense to many people.
This is the third year in a row for this bill.
Land of the...
Even as a kid I could shut up a roomful of relatives bragging about America by asking why, if this was the Land of the Free, blacks, who made up 33 percent of the population in my hometown, weren't allowed to go to Cincinnati's amusement park, cleverly named Coney Island (where did the good burghers get that name?).
If there's been one momentous cultural shift since I was a little boy noting blatant discrimination based solely on race, it's that blacks have been almost totally dealt in to this society.
Seventy percent of African Americans now live above the poverty line. Condi Rice is the most powerful woman in American politics, and Oprah Winfrey is the queen of show business, television division.
Two African-American actors won Oscars this year, and nobody said much about it because two other black actors had already won acting awards a couple of years ago.
And take the black man out of the American sports scene and you'd have to shut down the NBA and the NFL.
Despite some whites still resisting this change, and some blacks who refuse to admit there has been incredible social progress on this front, I think we as a culture can be very proud of the above-stated facts.
But for some reason all the animosity cloaked in righteous rhetoric that was once aimed at black people is now fired at gay people.
I don't say this because I am gay, or even bi. I ain't.
It's sad to have to say it this way, but necessary, because the bigots among us frame their homophobia in "moralistic" rhetoric, and if I were gay, that would be sufficient cause for dismissal of my point in their beady little bigoted eyes.
Why a country willing to let thousands of its sons and daughters die for an alleged Middle Eastern nation that doesn't even believe in equal rights for women, while endlessly trying to keep its own societal front door closed against equal rights for gays right here in Washington, is beyond me.
But it's my guess that HB 1515 will be shot down once again.
Reach the masses
Of course, none of this is debated at any length by the talking heads who read the majority of you the watered-down information advertisers and TV execs like to call "breaking news."
Oh, you'll hear a lot about gay marriage, whatever that is. But you won't hear much about legislative bigotry.
But hey, isn't that Mount St. Helen's smoke plume amazing!
Freelance writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at editor@capitolhill times.com.
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