Mondays with Mike: Cell Phone Zombies, epilog

Two weeks ago I posted about the burgeoning phenomenon of people walking—forward and backward—while glued to their cell phones. Kind of the pedestrian equivalent of texting and driving, and by my lights, nearly as  abhorrent.

I trimmed the post and sent it to the Chicago Tribune, which published it in the Voice of the People section the next day.

I was then contacted via LinkedIn by a producer for the WLS 890 AM morning show and asked, “Willing to take a call about the cell phone piece?” Why not, I thought.

That was before I realized the show is hosted by a notorious shock jock. I almost backed out, but on the advice of my wife, I did not. “It’ll be a good experience,” she said,

And she was right. I didn’t really learn anything new, but the experience did confirm my worst thoughts about these kinds of shows. To start, they called 15 minutes late. Second, when I went on, they did not acknowledge that they had called me, but presented as if I’d called in sort of randomly. I was on all of about 10 seconds, with no context.

The worst part: I had to listen to absolute drek while on hold. No, the worst part, really, is reckoning that lots of people listen to this awful stuff voluntarily every day.

Then again, exploitative media is not limited to radio. My old pal Kevin long ago—when sports call-in shows were still sort of novel—called them Sports Hate Radio. The formula is pretty much the same whether it’s Sports Hate or News Hate or radio, TV, or internet: Poke at the worst fears, biases, and insecurities in people—validate them, throw in freakish stuff here and there, and repeat. It’s pretty much the media version of crack.

Works for shock radio, Sports Hate, cable news, blogs, web sites. It’s all the same. To my right leaning friends: I don’t hate Fox News because of ideology—it’s because it’s this kind of crack dealer. My left-leaning friends: I feel the same way about MSNBC. And CNN.

We are awash in media and information, and also awash in entities that make raw stimulation—provoking anger above all, but also freak show stuff—their business models. It’s hard not to get pulled in (don’t ask me how I know).

We also have fewer and fewer qualified people covering it all in good faith, without an agenda—especially at the local level. (The New Orleans Times Picayune being the latest sad casualty.) That leaves a vacuum that national media machines are happy to fill. So we pay a lot of attention to things far away and far out of our control, and not the things in our own back yards. Again, don’t ask me how I know.

So, if you find yourself with cable news on at all hours, and are constantly aggravated, do yourself a favor and do what Howard Beale did in the movie Network: Just say you’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore. (You don’t have to throw your TV out the window; there is baseball and Game of Thrones and all. Plus, like Howard, you’ll end up ironically being one of the freakish stories.)

As I’ve written before, I’ve gone cold turkey on cable news—and I highly recommend you do the same. Also, don’t listen to call-in radio. Ignore bumper stickers. Don’t read web sites that just feed your appetite for what you already believe.

Then, I recommend a subscription to The Economist. Read it once a week. Talk to people about what you read and find out what they read and think.

And be sure to drink plenty of water.

You’re welcome.