In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking

In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking

• How many women will the Today Show fire before admitting their ratings problem is Matt Lauer, a horrible interviewer and dreary presence?

• A fiscal cliff? Really? Even wild animals are smart enough not to run over a cliff unless, of course, their leaders are too stupid not to do it.

• I’ll call it a “Holiday Tree” when you say “May the force bless you” when I sneeze.

• Educational issues aren’t about unions, or charter schools, or home schooling. They are about a fundamentally flawed, archaic, and doddering approach to young people in an age of computers, a wired society, and vociferous stimuli. We run schools as if they are factories, and most factories are extinct.

• There is no “fiscal cliff” any more than there is a “war on women.” These are simply incendiary metaphors to scare people and to polarize opinion. The fiscal repercussions of a failure to agree on preventing automatic austerity measures will be more like a long glide.

• Has anyone noticed that highly reputable sources are citing energy independence for the U.S. in the coming decades? Isn’t good news important at all, any more?

• David Letterman is over 70, and he’s certainly not getting funnier.

• If there is a bigger non-talent created by hype and media than Justin Bieber, I’ve yet to see it.

• At some point, every celebration and tragedy become ABOUT the media rather than reported by them.

• The U.S. economy is based on consumerism. Why is everyone so surprised that customers line up at stores and stores seek to advertise?

• People who ask for things for free because they claim they deserve special consideration are not people I want to get to know long-term.

• When I questioned a Native American newspaper editor who wrote an op-ed piece on an unrelated matter, he responded with a vicious, racial tirade (in which is got my ethnicity and religion wrong), calling me “Whitey” and claiming I was disagreeing simply because he’s Native American. Bias knows no racial bounds.

• Most local parades are desultory because they are created for the benefit of the organizers and participants, not the viewing public.

• Daniel Day Lewis is the finest actor of our times.

© Alan Weiss 2012