Ya know what?

After something like that, I'd probably be a little perturbed myself.

I probably be a little perturbed to the extent that I would think it prudent to keep my mouth shut for as long as it took to gain a little composure to make sure I wouldn't say something that I would regret saying or wish I said differently, considering the ramifications of the event, even without the context of world affairs as they are.

I'm just giving this big-mouthed glory-hound some more of the attention she craves. Maybe not the kind she expected, but hey, the same Constitutional precedent that lets daddy earn his keep so he can send little darlin' to Europe applies here as well.

Perhaps you don't see it this way, but the comments she made portrays Americans in exactly the way many non-Americans look at us and find us so contemptible. Big-mouthed, impulsive, ignorant, just some of traits that get us in trouble in the world spectacle.

Publishing this - and people defending it out of leaky-eyed poor-sot sympathy - just encourages the further erosion of intellectual and character standards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, call me out on my posts that have been unintellectual or simply crass in the past. The difference is that when I need it, I've got it to use. My concern is with the "less-informed" reader, who comprises the majority of our population, who doesn't and thinks it's OK. They see this kind of garbage in the newspaper and think, "If they do it on TV/in the news/in the movies..."

Remember that thread on appalling grammar/diction on in-flight announcements? "'AT THIS TIME' your seatbacks and tray tables must be in their full, upright, and locked positions..." People hear that and think if high-and-mighty institutions are doing it, well, then, it must be OK for me..." Cripe, I had a bout in grammar school where I almost was labeled dyslexic because I substituted the backwards "R" (as in "Toys R Us") for the word "are," thinking that the backwards "R" was standard, exactly because I believed if such a big company like Toys R Us could do it, then it must be OK. Perhaps from this I learned, early and poignantly, that images and expressions - especially those rendered by corporations and other highly visible institutions - do have an impact on individuals, so it's a responsibility to ensure that the right message gets across.

Of more local significance, however, these newspapers are the same ones that our career-politician legislators read and believe to portray the ethos of the American people. The politicians in turn devise security procedures that amount to nothing more than pantomime gestures that terribly incovenience us, in gratuitous attempt to patronize the sentiments expressed in such media coverage.

Garbage in, garbage out. And some of you guys say, "What's so wrong with a little girl boo-hoo-hooing about a fearful event?"

Read this month's Sky magazine on Delta. Walter Cronkite talks about standards in journalism. We're so far removed, I don't think people really even know what "standards" are any more. At least, people quite apparently can't recognize the indications that the quality of journalism reflect upon its readership.

Perhaps I now ought to be ashamed to regard the Economist as pedantic.

[This message has been edited by ETOPS01 (edited 12-26-2001).]