Narrow Exit

Posted on April 6, 2004 in Journalists & Pundits The Orange

It’s politics Tuesday!

The only time I watch network news is when I am held captive in a waiting room with a television that I cannot turn off. This morning, I was getting the truck serviced. They sent me to an ash-carpeted room. The windows looked out on a gray sky and silver gray garages. More attractive was the moving picture show shining from the window of the black box. Other clients stared as CNN put on one apologist after another for recent shootings of unarmed or wounded military personnel (civilians?) in Iraq or pontificated about what Condi Rice was going to say on Thursday. The tanned skin strained around their cheeks and eyes. They clutched their service receipts as they allowed the talking heads and the ever-moving stock ticker to keep their optical nerves focused on the Story.

The Story, that pattern which we hunger for. The Story, the spin that allows us to put the issues of the day to rest. The Story is what we take when we don’t have the courage to ask our medical insurance to allow us to see a psychiatrist or get assertiveness training. It’s a form of mass medicating, more conducive to the work environment than alcohol or pot or pills.

What happens in these minds when they drive off, I wonder? What do they take home or to work with them? I can’t see them being productive, but I can see them holding their heads low, grinding their teeth, worrying about their underarms, hoping that the boss doesn’t lob a mortar shell or a pink slip in their direction.