Lighten up — everything is not a ‘crisis’

This political cartoon appeared in Monday, February 13, 2017 edition of The Brazil Times.

Lighten up — everything is not a ‘crisis’

FRANK PHILLIPS

Times Reporter

The cartoon on our opinion page this week is of a donkey and an elephant butting heads. Atop the two is a person yelling, “Please, is there no room for civil discourse?” I know what he means.

Believe me, I know how important government is. I understand our world faces crisis after crisis; so many, in fact, we call them crises plural.

We used to take on one crisis at a time — THE Cold War, THE Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.

I remember walking home from school with my friends on a Friday after Kennedy announced the Cuban blockade of Soviet ships and we wondered if we would live to go back to school on Monday or be vaporized when the Russkies nuked Chicago.

These days, however, everything IS A CRISIS!

If the future of this world wasn’t so serious, when you turn on the morning news shows you would think you were watching the “promo” in the Christmas comedy movie, “Scrooged.”

In case you forgot, the promo is supposed to be about a live broadcast of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” on a fictional TV network.

Instead, the promo tries to get attention by showing Santa, Mrs. Claus and their elves under attack . They are rescued by Lee Majors, the “Six Million Dollar Man.”

The commercial ends with a video of an atomic blast and the message, “Be sure to watch. Your life may just depend on it.”

Again, my point is why does every day begin with a thinly veiled threat that “The world ends today!”

I understand TV ratings but I’m not sure every morning really begins with our world in jeopardy.

Even a recent “news story” on the Internet about aliens (not from those seven countries but from outer space) warns us that when aliens come to visit it could go either way. They could really help us or wipe us out.

Come on, when did UFO sightings cease to be funny?

It’s no wonder that so many YouTube videos are about TV in the ‘60s.

I mean, what is threatening about Barney Fife fumbling in his shirt pocket for his bullet or Beaver Cleaver climbing a billboard and falling into a huge cup that looks like it is filled with steaming coffee but is not, of course?

TV news back then was usually 15 minutes long and in black and white.

Everything is not threatening our world. The sky is not falling. There are happy things out there, even some funny things. We just have to turn off the TV news and look for them.