You know, DUer Dennis Donovan posted this terrific achievement remembrance

[PCIntern]

of the plane which circumnavigated the world nonstop and it got me to thinking:

For the past five years, virtually the entire focus of the country has been on one individual and his performances. Whenever I look at the TV new screen, it almost invariably has a red banner at the bottom announcing some new insanity or atrocity which is been performed in the name of the government of the United States, or the sequelae from the actions there of. I’m not sure that a great deal of the attraction to this guy by so many millions isn’t the excitement which he generates in their lives. It’s like having a continuous emergency report or special bulletin which causes excitement in the lives for so many which are considered dull And without purpose.

When I was a kid in the 50’s and 60’s watching tons of tv, when a Special Report or News Bulletin would suddenly interrupt a show or even a commercial, the adrenaline would start pumping and you knew you were watching an event and weirdly, saw yourself as a participant in this historical moment.

We have all been subjected to this continuous theater of bulletins and the devolution of our System for years now, and I wonder how long it will take for us to recover, if ever, from our own version of The Great Dictator.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

1. It got me thinking...

REALLY! 30 some yrs ago? If asked “when”, I’d have said, “Maybe, what, 10-15 yrs?”.

Time flies...

[lastlib]

2. Please don't refer to OrangeMonster as "Great" anything.

He is only great at lying, stealing, and destroying.

[PCIntern]

3. See Charlie Chaplin's film of that name.

[UpInArms]

4. All it has done is to give me a bad case of PTSD

I am looking forward to never hearing about his nasty twitter feed ever again.

[coeur_de_lion]

5. We all have PTSD

Mary Trump is writing a book on how to heal. Can't wait . . .

[mtnsnake]

6. Good post

Look at what's happened to the "Breaking News" banner that runs at the bottom of CNN so much of the time. It's completely lost its effectiveness. The only time a banner like that really means something these days is when a TV show gets interrupted in the middle of it for some news that actually can take your breath away.

[skip fox]

7. I also grew up in the 50s and 60s and I worry that withTrump we have become thrill junkies

or maybe outrage junkies.

The 60s were volatile and I was part of the news (Democratic convention in 1968) and these time affected me personally (avoiding the draft) but for much of the time I was tuned out and not watching television or listening to the news. So I don't know how the relative dullness felt in the mid 70s.

Will we be slightly disappointed each day not having this madman to entertain/outrage/puzzle/anger us several times a day?

I know we'll all be relieved, but will a part of us subconsciously miss the sense of national involvement? Will we miss not being part of a special (if precarious) time in the nation's life?

[mopinko]

8. outrage addiction is a real thing.

it worries me too. i hope dr biden takes that up.

[58Sunliner]

9. I think we will have problems trusting a return to stability given what we went through.

That's a feature of any post-traumatic event.

[hunter]

10. Quitting television solved that problem for me.

When I was a kid my dad would get home from work, pop open a beer, and watch the evening news, which was than a half hour of local CBS news followed by the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

It was like the Wild Kingdom of humanity, Walter Cronkite on the news set like Marlin Perkins, Dan Rather out in Vietnam or some other dangerous place like Jim Fowler.

That was whenever we had a television that worked. Our family would go months without a working television. I think the longest break was about eight months. When the television was broken my dad would get his news fix on the kitchen radio. (We did have a working television for the Apollo moon landings. If we hadn't, my grandfather probably would have bought us one. He was one of the many engineers who worked on that, and immensely proud of it.)

I think the hyperbole of September 11, 2001 news coverage and George W. Bush turned me off of television news forever. Television news and opinion are worthless to me. Noise.

My wife and I quit traditional television entirely more than a decade ago. Our television plays DVDs and Netflix. We can 'cast other stuff to it but mostly we don't.

It seems that once you quit television it soon becomes intolerable. Or maybe I was never fully habituated to television as a child.

So far as "special bulletin" adrenaline rushes go, I used to write for a university daily newspaper back when the AP News feed was still a mechanical teletypewriter rattling out yellow paper from a big roll. When a big news story hit the feed it was preceded by a series of bells. Everybody would jump up and crowd around, trying to read the story as it printed.

[PCIntern]

11. Yes!

Kennedy assassination: five bells

[murielm99]

13. I know I was never fully habituated to television as a child.

We did not have a TV until I was six. When we did get one, we were not allowed to watch a large number of shows. We watched children's programming and baseball.

I watch the evening news now, just to see what is actually being reported. (Not much). I do watch the local news more often, because there are fewer local and regional newspapers. I need to know some of the local events.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. Reminds me of this old post 9/11-era story from The Onion:

https://www.theonion.com/orange-alert-sirens-to-blow-24-hours-a-day-in-major-cit-1819566759

Orange Alert Sirens To Blow 24 Hours A Day In Major Cities
2/26/03 10:00AM

WASHINGTON, DC—As an additional reminder that the U.S. is on high alert for terrorist attacks, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge announced Tuesday that Orange Alert klaxons will blare 24 hours a day in all major cities.

"These 130-decibel sirens, which, beginning Friday, will scream all day and night in the nation's 50 largest metro areas, will serve as a helpful reminder to citizens to stay on the lookout for suspicious activity and be ready for emergency action," Ridge said. "Please note, though, that this is merely a precautionary measure, so go about your lives as normal."

***

"The steady 'alert' siren indicates the need to be generally aware of the threat of terrorism," he said. "This is the normal, default siren. The higher-pitched 'wail' siren, on the other hand, means federal authorities have credible information regarding a specific possible threat, and that citizens should ready themselves for the 30 to 50 percent likelihood of an attack. If citizens hear an 'alternating wail' siren, a piercing shriek/whine interrupted every 30 seconds by short bursts of what sounds like gunfire, they need to prepare for the 70 percent chance of a 20 percent more serious disaster. And, finally, a 'pulsating steady' alarm means Americans should have plenty of plastic sheeting and duct tape on hand to make a shelter in the almost guaranteed event of chemical, biological, or radiological attack."

Ridge emphasized that all these alarms merely indicate an Orange Alert state and not a 100 percent definite threat. Should the country be raised to Red Alert status, an entirely different set of patterned horn bursts would be put into use, the details of which will be available at www.fema.gov.

[ananda]

14. You're right.

Everything is treated as special event theater these days,
to the point that it is the new normal.

I wonder how our brains and shock systems have evolved
to deal with this.

[PWPippinesq]

15. I'll be ecstatic not to see trump's mug plastered everywhere -

blanketing any news source with multiple images. He never has deserved the massive coverage and now can be made irrelevant if the media will stop giving him a free forum. If wishes were fishes . . .

[BobTheSubgenius]

16. In that every experience shapes a person, no one will ever get over this.

And, in many cases, that's not such a bad thing.