Lighten Up
This commentary was written by CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer.
My column last week was supposed to be funny.
It was a tongue-in-cheek bit of satire intended to amuse and perhaps make a small point. Next time I attempt public humor, I will use a warning label: Attention, readers! The following is a joke. Do not consume with seriousness.
In the offending punditry, I spun out a couple of preposterous conspiracy theories suggesting that the Mark Foley, David Vitter and Larry Craig scandals were diabolical plots carefully orchestrated by wily GOP tricksters to confuse dupable Democrats. I meant to poke fun at our prickly and paranoid political disposition.
I am now here to tell you: we are way too prickly and paranoid for that sort of gag.
Some people sort of missed the joke. I was thunderstruck by the comments and e-mails I received that took my column as dead serious analysis (I haven't actually been thunderstruck in years, so that was kind of fun).
From the loony left, I was commended for my biting insight. Writers speculated about which of the plots was most likely. And of course there was outrage - outrage that Republicans could be so ruthless.
With perfect symmetry, I was condemned by the right wing-nuts for my liberal bias. Only a Commie could think the Republican Party capable of such dastardly deeds.
You can't see the comments anymore because we actually had to remove all of them because there were so many anti-gay slurs and other mean-spirited oozings.
For the record, I do not actually think that Republican henchmen deliberately framed Foley, Vitter and Craig as a part of a sinister cabal to distract the nation from Iraq.
I am compelled to wonder: Are we facing a comedy crisis?
We are constantly reminded by trend spotters that young people get their "news information" from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Leno and Letterman still feast off of politics every night. YouTube and its kin enable thousands of would-be Lenny Bruces to put their satire into the public sphere, and that they do. All this implies the state of the union's funny bone is healthy.
But as is true in so many areas, the political class in this country is different. We know from polling that politically active people are more partisan and extremist than the other 95 percent of the electorate. My theory is that the political correctness of the political elite has badly inhibited its gag reflex.
And, yes, political correctness is now thoroughly bipartisan. Right and left match each other's humorlessness, pomposity and anger dogma for dogma. It's time to banish the phrase "politically correct" as an insult of the left only.
Obviously, independents are funnier. And humor is a sibling of tolerance.
There is, I am afraid, a civic crankiness that extends to the kind of people who respond to online news commentary. The housing market is tanking, unemployment is rising and household finances are tight. But even when the economy is good, too many of us are over-extended and overscheduled. There's a book out called "Crazy Busy" and we are. We're fried.
I had an experience this week that made me think we are also frazzled by the background noise of our news, information and media lives. I was at Washington's Reagan National Airport. I arrived early and switched my flight to the 8:30 a.m. Delta Shuttle to New York, instead of the 9:30 a.m. flight I'd originally planned.
When I sat down at the gate, I realized it was September 11. On September 11, 2001, I was waiting for the 9:30 a.m. Delta Shuttle when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. And I saw the first mushroom of smoke over the Pentagon as I raced back from the airport to the Washington Bureau of CBS News.
This time, a few people at the gate seemed a bit more nervous than usual. But it could have been just my imagination. Truthfully, everyone looked tense - like always. CNN was blaring from the TV, as it always is at airports. Why is that?
No one was watching as far as I could see. And I looked carefully. But there was the constant bubble of news talk in the background: surge, roadside bomb, a paralyzed football player and bad weather somewhere.
Airports are stressful places on the best of days. Airlines haven't had best of days for quite some time. Why is it necessary to pump more anxiety into an anxiety factory?
Obviously, we inflict this kind of media pain on ourselves all the time with our Blackberries and super-duper cell phones. And we shackle ourselves to the minute-by-minute tensions of home and work.
It's too bad we can't dump them from our daily loads more often.
We need to lighten up in so many ways.
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Against the Grain. We will publish some of the interesting (and civil) ones, sometimes in edited form.
By Dick Meyer