George Carlin Must Be Laughing

A long time ago, at the start of his career, comedian George Carlin did a take off on the nightly network news. The routine appeared on his first album, AM & FM. Although more people remember some of his later routines as more important, like the ‘7 words you can’t say on television’, I remember the ‘Nightly News’ as one of his best ever. It truly made me think, as a teenager, that not all adults were so completely ‘gone’ as to believe what was being presented.

The funniest part of the routine was the sports announcer, Biff Barf, who ‘called ‘em as he saw them, and … if he didn’t see ‘em, he made them up!’

I feel that this is what is happening today, with all forms of news.

If there is no story that is new, or worthy of being covered, something is made up. It may not be a total fabrication, but its roots are not totally factual either. In this age of ‘infotainment’, it is no wonder people on the street are utterly devoid of what true history is. History is being revised almost daily by many programs on television, by talk radio, and, to a lesser extent, by what is written in books.

Witnessing the recent problems with Wikipedia, does give pause, and upon careful thought, the idea that some sort of information policing should take place. That would only be worse, yet, it is almost impossible to know what can help. The need for information also drives those who would change the facts, or distort the picture.

Sometimes, things that seem to be otherwise good for the world are at cross purposes.

The need to lower waste, combined with the availability of information via the internet, would seem to make the printing of fewer books a good and ecological move. The problem here is that with fewer pieces of ‘the record’ in print, and the ease with which information stored  by electronic means is changed, ‘the record’ will be jeopardized. Some will say that more permanent forms of storage are available, such as compact and digital versatile discs, but time has shown that ‘laser rot’ can be a problem, and once again, ‘the record’ is in jeopardy.

The current administration in Washington states that those pronouncing it as a failure are too quick to conclude. The judgement of history is something it says will vindicate these years. Maybe those in power know something we don’t.

[tags] information retrieval, information storage, history, infotainment, Wikipedia, history as fact, recorded events, George Carlin, political humor [/tags]