All I Know is What I Read in the Papers

All I Know Is What I Read in the Papers

I'm nobody special. I am like most people, I live in my family and my job and my community and I occasionally get out to the grocery store and the mall and various restaurants, the rare concert or theatrical performance (because I prefer to attend these events by television because the seats are better and I can bring my own refreshments.) I'm average. I have to build my picture of the larger world the same way that Will Rogers did. "All I know is what I read in the papers."

But the papers aren't what they used to be. Namely the only game in town. When Hearst or Pulitzer told your great-grandfather that the evil Spanish had sunk the USS Maine, gramps had very little further information about the event with which to compare. Now our window on the world is wider. We have radio and television and movies that can remind us of inconvenient truths and billboards and commercials that usually tell us convenient lies and now we have the internet which is the perfect instrument for doing comparisons. Every citizen-blogger is a sleuth.

Even though average joes like you and me still live in the small worlds of our kitchens and living rooms and our offices, the grocery store and on the freeway where we are either listening to NPR or Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern. My point is that we have the choice. We are able to, and we should, compare the voices and the pictures and the ideas. The Poet's Eye sees that it is possible to discern the whole truth from a panoply of half-truths and conjecture and even from outright lies, oh yes, lies can help us in our search for the truth. especially if we notice from which lips the lies are issued.