No One Asked Me But… (December 7, 2022)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… Here are just some thoughts that come to my mind as I watch the news as portrayed on any television network.

Do we really need a weather report every ten minutes? Does the weather change that often and that rapidly?

Before twenty-four-hour news channels, we had a place we could look for the weather at any time and as many times as we wished during the day. It was called a window.

Now I must admit that I am old. But I remember when, in the early 1950’s, we got a six o’clock news report that lasted for fifteen minutes. It came on right after Crusader Rabbit.

Interestingly enough one of Crusader Rabbit’s challenges was overcoming the Governor of the Texas’s threat to deport all jackrabbits to Mexico.

I can remember how the six o’clock news changed our household. My father went to work at six in the morning and returned home at six at night. Dinner was on the table and served at six. The child who was not at the table at six did not eat that night. When the television finally invaded our household, dinner time was postpone until 6:15 after the six o’clock news. It was quite an event when the news was extended to thirty minutes.

Back then, we could count on Walter Cronkite to give us an unbiased report on the events of the day. America misses reporters like Walter.

Now we have multiple stations doing news 24/7. This has caused a dilution of the news. News programs are now an entertainment platform competing for a rating. They find it imperative to champion the cause of one or the other spectrum of the political scene of America.

While most of the mainstream media leans left, Fox News is definitely involved in presenting a right-wing slant of the news. It is nearly impossible to find a news channel that is not slanted either to the left or right on the political scale.

Interestingly enough, for the most part we are still only getting thirty minutes of news in every hour of news because of the commercials that one must watch to see the news.

No one asked me but… Commercials have ruined the enjoyment of most media entertainment venues in America. You go to a movie theater and pay your ten-dollar admission fee and are assaulted with 20 minutes of commercials before you can see the feature. Before the movie starts you are told that the movie is being brought to you by a local auto dealer. Silly me, I thought it was being brought to me by the ten-dollar fee I paid at the door of the theater.

The real issue I have with T.V. today is the over-abundance of commercials. I have timed commercial breaks that run for over seven minutes for programing segments that run five minutes. There is one point in evening news when the program breaks for nearly five minutes of commercials and then returns to the news for less than two minutes before going back to commercials for another five minutes.

For some reason I thought the original reason for companies like DirectTV and Dish Network was that you paid the fee to see T.V. without commercials. This reason quickly disappeared when these networks realized that money was to be made in the selling of advertising, not in selling their services.

Medical commercials seem to be numerous and ridiculous if you analyze them. The products advertised for the most part require a doctor’s prescription to use. The viewer is told to tell his/her doctor about the drug that is being advertised.

Excuse me, if I have to tell my doctor what to prescribe, the problem is not the drug, it is the doctor.
What is even more ridiculous is, after championing the merit of the miracle drug – in small print and a rapid voice – they describe all of the adverse effects one might suffer from the drug. In most cases I come away thinking the person would be better off with the ailment they suffer than the possible effects of the drug which sometimes include an increase in the danger of death.

One of my favorite is a commercial featuring an ex-governor of Arkansas who says he recommends a medication he has been taking every night for seven years so he can sleep. However, he assures the viewer that it is non-habit forming.

If you have to take something every night for seven years to sleep, that might suggest it is habit forming. Could a heroin addict not say the same thing? I take heroin every day but it is not habit forming. Would the governor have withdrawals and not be able to sleep without his drug? We don’t know because he has been taking it regularly for seven years.

No one asked me but… The Supreme Court has put off the issue of the Constitutionality of President Biden’s Presidential decree forgiving student debt until 2023.

Let me suggest that they should merely rule that any Presidential decree involving the appropriation of government funds is unconstitutional turning the issue back to the House of Representatives where the expenditures of all government funds must, by Constitution, originate.

The President and other champions of debt forgiveness are also championing the cause of equity. Let me ask where the equity is in using the tax dollars of those who paid their college debts, those who paid for college without going into debt, and those who did not go to college because it was too costly and refused to go into debt, to pay off these debtors college loans?

The liberals in government talk about reparations. How about reparations for those of us who paid for college before college loans were available?

I would much rather see the billions of dollars going to debt relief for those individuals who are saddled with debt incurred because of medical bills.

Thought of the week…”Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.”
-Ogden Nash