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6 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | JUNE 2015 ALL GROWN UP — THE WAGES OF THE GOLDEN YEARS By Crotchet E. Oldman I am all in favor of brevity. The quicker one gets to the point, the better. But the social media of today have such short attention spans that there is no point at all. For example, the Tweets on Twitter are limited to 140 characters — and that includes commas, spaces and periods. There is no time to open the subject much less get to the point. If that classic of brevity, the Gettysburg Address, was reduced to 140 characters, it would say: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the propo." Dedication to the "propo" may be a good thing, but the stuff about "all men being created equal" and "honored dead," their "last full measure of devotion," and the "great task remaining before us," would truly "perish from this earth." Or take another straight-to-the-point document, the Ten Commandments. In 140 characters it would say: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven abo." This would condone a good bit of misbehavior, like coveting, swearing, ignoring the Sabbath, insulting parents and running around on the wife — to say nothing of robbery and murder. Of course, you can use a hashtag to look at more Tweets – all 140 characters or less and just as profound as the one you started with. Like the jail warden said in Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." Clearly we need to do better. We are leaving essential stuff out. I remember back when newspapers were often criticized for being superficial. But consider that a single newspaper page contains twice the number of words as a 30-minute TV newscast — and today people who watch TV consider themselves well informed. After all, they're not in the dark like people who rely on such Internet fads like Twitter, Instagram and the ubiquitous, witless, ego-driven blogs. Somebody says "Immigration," and someone snaps, "Throw 'em all out or it's amnesty for criminals;" then somebody else yells, "Let 'em all in; they're lovely people." This brainless hollering is what passes for discussion today. Somebody says "Gun control," and someone growls, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people;" followed by the cry, "Ban all guns; they kill 30,000 people a year." Speaking of gun control, the right to bear arms is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. If that masterpiece of brevity was reduced to Twitter size, it would say: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of spee." Not a bad start — I always wanted free spee but among other things, the right to a jury trial has vanished, cruel and unusual punishment is OK, the press can be muzzled and the right to own a gun is gone. I'll bet the NRA will get really mad and demonstrate against that. Or maybe not — the right to peaceably assemble is gone too. No wonder our politics are polarized. We are talking to each other with quick, knee-jerk snorts, shouts, put-downs, flippant slogans and wisecracks: Democrats "tax and spend," Republicans "protect the fat cats," liberals "hate America," conservatives "hate progress." Our level of dialogue has sunk to the point that, "Where's the beef?" seems like a profound examination of an issue. There is no discussion. We communicate in worn-out slogans we heard somewhere, which makes it unnecessary to think — which is the problem. It's like Pavlov's dog — he drooled when the dinner bell rang because it meant food was coming. After a while he drooled at the bell whether there was dinner or not, because he had heard it meant food. We can't expect a dog to think about the meaning of things, but we should expect more of ourselves — and not converse in dog drool. FOUR SEASONS SPOTLIGHT Brevity Can Go Too Far — Brainlessly

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