Attic Salt for Jan. 8, 2012
America’s anger level is worth tracking
To air pollution warnings, the heat index, wind chill factor and terrorism threat advisories, could we add the National Anger Gauge?
We could allocate a few seconds to the NAG on the 6 o’clock news.
“Dave, we had a really high NAG today which goes right along with the seven shootings city police reported. Can LSU go undefeated? More when we come back.”
When I read news stories online, I scan a story to get its gist, then hop down to the readers’ comments. Then, I go back and read the story carefully to see just what touched the readers off.
The “Comment” button opens the door to a padded cell filled with people off their meds, people who woke up angry and are getting madder by the minute.
We are a nation of unhappy, anxious, angry people. Layoffs, corporate hooligans, disappeared retirement money, questionable wars that go on for years and an out-of-touch government have made us a people fascinated by the sight of our blood boiling.
Ashley Crawford had a nice story in The Times-Picayune the other day about the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. I felt perfectly safe reading the story, certain that it would lower my blood pressure a point or two.
When fat Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, of Wisconsin, told church people at a Christmas gathering that first lady Michelle Obama has a “big butt,” I expected the “Comment” section to light up.
When His Idiocy Cardinal Frances George, Chicago archbishop, compared gay paraders to Klu Klux Klan marchers, I was sure there’d be some spirited back and forth in the “Comment” department. The cardinal sees gay people and the KKK as threats to Catholicism. The cardinal must think the church is weathering the sexual abuse of children just fine.
What about birding could rile readers of an online newspaper story? We’re waiting on a study for confirmation, but it seems that people reading online in their underwear after five cups of coffee or four beers are easily outraged.
“It really seems strange that in fact we may know more about birds, including the migratory species of waterfowl, than we do about the impoverished and homeless,” began a comment on the birding story.
It went downhill from there though another reader, responding to the first reader, pointed to a lack of evidence that we know more about birds than we do poor people.
I carried this away from a stress management class: Try to avoid people who habitually say things that make you angry or who make you want to strike them.
Another way of putting that is, “Avoid people who don’t have enough to do.”
I’ll continue to read the comments sections online. They help me map pockets of stupidity along with regions of high atmospheric pressure, rain chances and the morning bus stop temperature.