No fear; No TV

Oregonian columnist Renee Mitchell today bemoaned the reported decline of civility in the city. People no longer greet each other, or wave or learn each other’s names, she opined.

“We’re afraid to venture out at night because we don’t know who’s out there, lurking in the darkness. Or what they’re capable of,” she wrote.

She cited statistics showing that more and more people are feeling unsafe beyond the confines of their houses. The nights are particularly unnerving.

Her solution was to encourage neighbors to attend National Night Out events on August 5. Dozens of the neighborhood get-togethers are planned around the city.

That’s well and good, but what about the rest of the year? And what about that lingering feeling that to be alone on our streets at night is taking your life into your hands.

I wrote Renee to suggest that people should consider simply shutting off their TVs — in particular the lurid crime reporting foisted on a gullible, but sensation-seeking public. FOX News on KPTV, and its ratings-hungry mimics, thrive on broadcasting mayhem. It’s cheap, reality-twisting reporting.

Much of the rest of TV does the same, making violence and its lurid appeal its stock-in trade. I suggested to Renee that her own newspaper, as it struggles to maintain readership, seems to be printing more crime news and giving it more prominence.

Several years ago media researcher George Gerbner discovered that heavy viewers of TV had an inflated sense of how much crime is in their communities. They had come to accept the crime-infested media portrayals over the reality of the world outside their doors. In short, TV was frightening them into home-bound isolation. He called the phenomenon “The Mean World Syndrome.”

So if you want to feel safer and better about your neighborhood, by all means go to the National Night Out in your neighborhood. But if you want to feel better permanently about the world around you, TURN OF THE TV NEWS. Better yet, call the stations to complain.

P.S. On a related note, attendance at our inter-generational Thursday Game Board Nights at the bottom of our hill is picking up. And, yes, we are learning each other’s names and getting to know, trust, and like each other.

Being required to volunteer

As George Orwell pointed out long ago, the English language is under siege, and it is up to us to fend for it.

(Among his many alerts was "Animal Farm's" "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.")

The signs are everywhere.

The next time a store offers you a “free gift” take it on yourself to ask the clerk whether the store is also offering gifts that aren't free.

Or consider “recall back” or “foresee ahead.” Leave it at “recall” and foresee.” Likewise “past memories” and “future predictions.”

This is all by way of introduction to Renee Mitchell’s column in today’s Oregonian.

Although the column tells me a bit more about Renee’s domestic life than I want to know, the column makes a good point about the need for men to get more involved in the lives of their young sons.

The sticking point for me came in this sentence about Detroit schools: “Parents are required to volunteer at least 16 hours each quarter.”

“Required to volunteer”?

Hello?

Volunteers, by definition, aren’t required to do anything. That’s why they are called “volunteers.”

If I’m not mistaken, someone who is “required to volunteer” is called a slave.