If you really want to have a voice in what is happening in governing, be it the national government, local government or even down to small social or specialized clubs, you really need to plan ahead and work toward a goal.

Lately, I thought of some of the criteria that I might use in deciding which candidates for various offices I might support. In my last column, I mentioned a concern (or pet peeve, if you will) that would have been a good deciding factor for me to determine for whom I would vote. It turned out that that was all for naught in that I could not find any candidate for any office who was willing to give high priority to ending all of the robo calls and garbage emails that I have been receiving lately, not to mention the junk mail delivered by Uncle Sam. Oh, Fiddlesticks!

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It is tough at times to keep up with the latest news. Even keeping track of when something is or has happened is difficult. The problem is complicated by many magazines that date their publications out into the future.

Thus, even though on Oct. 9 I thought negotiations for a further pandemic stimulus bill had been nixed by President Trump and this was verified in a magazine that I get dated Oct. 16, I heard that there was a stimulus bill from Trump for $1.8 trillion. Why don’t magazines use the date when the magazine actually rolls off the printing press? Hey, has Oct. 16 occurred yet or is that still in the future?

Since 1896, The New York Times has used the slogan, “All the news that’s fit to print.” I suggest some revisions to that slogan, such as: “All the news that was fit to print.” Or “All the news that’s fit to print and then some.” And maybe the more truthful: “Some of the news that you might find interesting plus a lot more.” I’ll bet the readers of this column could come up with many better slogans than my pitiful contributions.

Television and radio news shows also spend a lot of time not reporting news, but speculating on what the news will be. Well before the presidential and vice presidential debates, there were presentations being made by “reporters” on what each candidate might say. Then there are always the predictions as to how many people will show up for which rallies and what percentage would be social distancing and what percentage would be wearing masks.

Then there are the spin doctors who immediately when a speech is finished, get to give us little snippets replayed and disected. Heck, why bother listening to the real thing when you can get a much quicker rundown after the speech is finished?

jtr

What we get during the political campaigns is not unlike what we get in the sports world. Have you ever noticed that some newspapers, radio shows and TV shows advertise “News and Sports” as though they are different. Their structure is not. Before a sports game, the announcers often preview by advising the viewers to watch for particular actions of a particular player. After a game there are the interviews where the player can relive (sometimes fast-talk) an experience of one of his/her brilliant moves.

The “instant” replays become not so instant when you see it for the fifth or six time all within about a minute or so.

For football there is almost always a longer replay during the half-time when five or six critics, usually former stars or announcers, get to pick a favorite play or two and give a rehash of what was good or bad. How much does each of those critics get paid for the few minutes they are on the air? For many sports there is the “after game” interview when a player gets to cover all that he/she did.

The saving grace of television is that if it is really something great and you happened to be taking a potty break when there was a fantastic play, you will still be able to catch up on it with the replay. One of the two “watching paint dry sports” (for me they are baseball and golf – you might have your own choice of what a paint dry sport is) at least allows me to do other things while the game is being played knowing that I will still be able to catch up on what happened.

As for football on TV on Sundays, my half-hearted watching is sometimes a bit frustrating. The broadcast often switches from one game to another without warning and so I sometimes see something that might be more interesting in general than the particular game I tuned into in the first place.

The pandemic broadcasts have been interesting with their cardboard audiences and/or empty stands, but I have often wondered who all of the spectators are who invariably seem to be standing around – are they coaches and assistant coaches, or doctors, or news reporters or spouses?

Sometimes they do provide some cheers or applause. If the pandemic continues, maybe they will have to have more canned (recorded) applause, laughs, or boos to replace a real audience.

The question might then get to be: “Which team gets to control the applause machine?”

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!