Was I the only one to be surprised, while awaiting for President Obama to speak on Saturday’s horror in Tucson, to flip away from the cable news networks and see an NFL playoff game and college hoops games blaring from the Big 3 networks as if it were just another Saturday afternoon?
On one set of channels, lawmakers and pundits were bemoaning what is happening to America, while on the other batch “Wild Card Saturday” and Papa John’s Pizza were front and center.
It almost made me long for the long-ago days, when my brothers and I would moan in unison when we caught President Eisenhower’s grey – in more ways than one – visage flit across our Philco. We knew we were doomed, and that so long as the President was speaking, he’d be on all three of the channels we got out of Hartford. TV was a national hearth back then, for both good (“Ladies and gentlemen – the Beatles!”) and bad (“From Dallas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.…”)
I have no doubt that the cleavage in the U.S. reflected by this two-faced television experience is real. It’s happening with incomes, with education, and with dreams. We’re witnessing it today: different realities for different Americas.