CREEPING CHANGE WITHOUT MUCH HOPE

It’s Sunday, and it’s raining again. Any time there’s a thunderstorm, there’s a good chance of it being SEVERE! At least that has been the case of late. This has been the wettest June ever in Indiana. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the nasty humidity and high temps. Well enough of my complaining about the weather and onward to complaining about something more important.

Does anyone else feel there is far more commercial time and far less program time on both TV and Radio? It wouldn’t be bad if the same commercials weren’t repeated at each break. On average, there are 5 minutes of commercials for every 10 minutes of programming. It’s making Tivo more and more attractive. There is no Tivo for radio. Damn! It may reach a point where no one is seeing or hearing what these advertisers have to say. Is it possible the radio and TV stations are getting a bit greedy and overselling commercial time. They wouldn't do that! If they keep this up, there will be 24 hour a day infomercials. Oh I forgot. Some stations already have back to back to back infomercials!!

I saw some good news on Face Book. I follow the Navarre Beach comments. Today they showed pictures of Navarre Beach from yesterday. They show a large number of people in the water and on the beach. No sign of oil or tar balls. I’m a little confused. I’ve heard there is oil on the beaches of Pensacola and Destin. Since Navarre Beach is right between Pensacola and Destin I’m curious how Navarre was skipped? What am I missing here?

Most of the news of the oil spill is not good. If any of you have seen MSNBC’s comparison of the oil spill off Mexico in 1979 and this year’s oil spill off the coast of Florida, you should check it out on You Tube. It’s fascinating. The exact same attempts to stop the oil and clean the beaches are being used today. Was nothing learned? Silly question. Obviously not. The technology for digging deeper has improved dramatically. The technology for dealing with an oil spill is the same as it was in 1979. Pretty sad, but not surprising. When do we ever learn from history. Another silly question. Perhaps it has something to do with the re-writing of history?

This is a warning. It’s incremental! It’s a little bit more loss of freedom each day, week, month and year. Hopefully none of us wake up one day under a dictatorship. If we all keep saying, “oh well, it could be worse”, tyranny will slip in the back door. Those of you familiar with events leading up to the holocaust will know what I mean. The Germans told the Jews they could no longer have radios. The Jews said, “we can deal with that”. As we all know, that was only the beginning. Get involved. Make sure this doesn’t happen for the sake of our children and grandchildren. I won’t be around to witness this, but my kids will. Remember, I said it’s incremental.

jim