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God bless the U.S., or US – Take Your Pick
As we get ready to celebrate our nation’s 249th birthday, it seems an appropriate time to repeat something a lot of us are saying.
Stop the division!
Maybe it’s because I’m a newspaper guy, but I put a lot of the blame on social media. It’s so easy to say all kinds of things about someone who isn’t in front of you. Granted, that’s been going on since recess at Bedrock Elementary – but the audience was Pebbles, Bam-Bam and a couple others. Now, social media reaches dozens for some, millions for others.
It doesn’t stop there – and I hate to say it – my brothers and sisters in the media world haven’t helped. We’ve all heard the saying “if it bleeds it leads.” I may be wrong, but I contend it really went off the rails after Watergate.
In 1974, the reporting duo of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward had a book published detailing the inside story on the reporting that went behind unveiling the direct link to Richard Nixon’s White House and a break-in at the Democratic National Committee HQ in the Watergate Hotel and Office.
A couple of years later the book became a movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
Just a few years later I was walking through the newsroom of the Pulitzer Prize winning Orange County Register, a huge newspaper in California. The editor was pointing out reporters who had “taken down” politicians.
Our industry, at least in some ways, went from being the friendly neighborhood news to targeted journalism.
It happened with TV, too. Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and Chet Huntley were replaced with TMZ News, Geraldo Rivera and biased cable news outlets.
Our people, our country became like Allan Sherman‘s great fuji bird. We soared majestically from the mountaintop but spiraled to our doom.
Take heart though. Let’s remember that everything has a lifespan. Take beehive hairdos, greased hair DAs, bell bottom jeans and Ford Pintos. The only thing that doesn’t change is that we live in constant change.
This division won’t last – at least it doesn’t have to. We were a deeply divided people in the 1860s that erupted into a not-so-civil war. For most of us, we remember when we were told to not trust anyone over 30, riots and burning campus buildings and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young singing about four dead in Ohio.
Maybe it wasn’t lasting, but we found ways to come together after all that.
We can do it again . . . if we want to. The answer, dear friends, is us. It’s as easy as agreeing to disagree. Do I think like some of my liberal friends? Not even close. I’ve got a buddy who will swear with his dying breath that biological males should be able to compete against biological females if they identify as female. He is convinced he’s right. I am convinced he’s wrong. Can we be friends anyway? Of course.
Do you know anyone you agree with completely, without one slight difference? Me neither. So we’re already befriending others who don’t share our every opinion. It’s only the lunatics who let disagreements not draw lines, but build walls. Really big walls.
Perhaps as we get ready to celebrate the red, white and blue we might first start by celebrating us. All of us. What was it Dickens wrote for Tiny Tim – God bless us, every one.
Amen, and Happy Birthday, America! May you go forward in unity.
Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically on Wednesdays in The Paper. Timmons is the publisher of The Paper and can be contacted at ttimmons@thepaper24-7.com.