To the News Media Industry: A Dare.
I dare you, in the name of all Gods (including yours- “Filthy Lucre”) to, for one week, report on what is going RIGHT in the World.
Do you think that it would kill us, or you, to hear about some local river now clean enough for kids to play in due to Community Action? How about how low income families operating pet rescues out of their homes – and on their own dime! What about kids raising funds for parks and recreation in their hometowns? When did you last report on a local blood drive? A family reunion with six generations in attendance? Some kid cutting grass to help out at home? Where did all of the mid-America heroes go?
Believe me, they are alive and well! They continue to do good deeds without fanfare nor any shred of encouragement from you.
I fear you, The Media, have become so jaded, so entangled in exposing “dirty laundry” under the guise of America’s “right to know” that you have lost sight of America’s heart. Worse, you have become more than just a bearer of bad tidings. You have of late become as much of an enemy to our Freedom as the creatures with which we now find ourselves at war. A pity. Just imagine for a moment if you, The Media, were to focus your energies on encouraging Americans. Hell, even the lightest of stories can uplift the spirits and the will of those embattled in Life’s miriad of skermishes. An example…
As this week progressed I found myself thinking about my father often. Had he lived he would have turned 83 this week. I recall the stories he told me about his life and times…
Understand that his wasn’t exactly ‘the best of times’. He was born in 1923, the second of seven children. One of only two sons in that crowd and to a demanding – often cruel by todays standards – father. When he was six the Great Depression hit. It was no picnic in Pickens, South Carolina. Sometime after his 16th birthday he tired of spending his nights digging first a basement, and then a sub-basement, under his father’s house at night following his early morning paper route, school, and chores. He lied about his age and joined the US Navy. After training he was stationed on the USS Wasp (CV-7) which was immediately sent to the Pacific after 7 Dec 1941. Wasp was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-19 on Tuesday, 16 September 1942, during flight operations 150 miles southeast of San Cristobal Island. Dad spent the rest of the war onboard the USS Lansdowne (DD-486) visiting such vacation spots as the Aleutians, Rabaul, Torokina, Bougainvllle, Guam and Tinian.
Yet these were not the stories Dad told me, (though I do remember his nightmares). No, I had to find out this information on my own. Only then, when I asked about specifics, did he fill in the details. Always in a quiet voice and with a pained and far-away look in his eyes – and never when children were near enough to hear. Dad’s war stories were about the comradery among the crew, the “Government projects” (Personal projects, like knives or alcohol, made with Navy material.) conducted below decks, San Francisco, Hawaii, and his favorite was how our hometown paper, the Pickens Sentinal, that my Grandmother sent faithfully each week would be darned near unreadable by the time he got it because everyone – even the Captain(!) – wanted to read such headline stories as “Bill Waldrop’s Sow Births 17 Piglets“. These were the things that kept up moral and made America and her fighting men strong. Not the number ships sunk, troops killed, campaign set backs. No. It was stories of life from ‘back home’, the little things, the stories that make one smile and remember what our lives as FREE Americans is really like.
So, my dear Mr. Newsman, I dare you to show us – for just one week – what is good and right in America. Show us the charity donation rate rather than the crime rate. Or if you must tell us about crime, tell the whole Truth, like how crime is down Nationwide, and add in the stories about how the common American citizens thwarted attacks by strength of will and their Right to Keep and Bear Arms. You do remember the Constitution don’t you? I won’t go off on that tangent other than to remind you guys in the media that once the Bill of Rights is butchered to remove the Right of Americans to bear arms, the Right of Free Speach is next. Where will you be then? Eh Comrade?
Let’s see the good stuff! Come on, I dare you. I double dare you!
Bull, out.
