Several readers have written to ask my thoughts on the Communist Chinese "weather/spy" balloon that floated for days through the midsection of our homeland last week before finally being shot down just off the coast of South Carolina.
The official excuse floated for not downing it initially over the remote Aleutian Islands where it first entered sovereign U.S. territory or afterwards over sparsely populated Montana where it entered the continental U.S. was the supposed fear that the large balloon and its attached hardware might harm people on the ground when it fell.
Ye gads! Does that mean fully grown people can't look up (along with scores of waiting news crews) and avoid a slowly descending balloon? Oh puulease!
The entire event struck me a lot like watching a belligerent neighbor who has vowed to run you out of town suddenly arriving uninvited on your property with his video camera running, walking through your front door and continuing to meander through your home recording every room then out the side door before you finally decide to stop him by force and confiscate his camera.
By then his video is likely on the Internet, and he becomes angry with you for daring to stop him and keep his camera.
The spectacle did provide for a media circus, a week's worth of wild speculations and, well, certainly an abundance of media hot air. But the official reaction to our air space being violated so flagrantly by a nation that wants to defeat us on every front sure made our leaders appear weak and feckless in the eyes of the world and many of our own citizens.
What do you suppose China would have done had the tables been turned? Let us float around, gathering information through the middle of their own sovereign country?
Pathetic public trust
I read the results of a 2022 Gallup poll the other day that (no surprise to me) showed trust in the media--both TV and newspapers--stands near rock bottom where it has languished for years.
This is to be expected when the media our citizens depend upon for honest, objective and credible news reporting decide instead to become activists for political parties rather than an independent and objective Fourth Estate watchdog in the public interest.
Only 16 percent of U.S. adults now say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers, and 11 percent in television news, the poll found. Both readings, from a poll done June 1-20, 2022, are down five percentage points since the previous year. Pathetic, eh?
Gallup's tracked confidence in newspapers since 1973 and television news since 1993. Television news and newspapers rank nearly at the bottom of a list of various American institutions, with only Congress garnering less confidence from the public than TV news.
"While these two news institutions have never earned high confidence ratings," Gallup wrote, "they have fallen in the rankings in recent years. A majority of Americans have expressed confidence in newspapers only once--in 1979, when 51 percent did. But there is a wide margin between that and the second-highest readings of 39 percent in 1973 and 1990. The trend average for newspapers is 30 percent, well above the latest reading of 16 percent, which is the first time the measure has fallen below 20 percent. The percentage of Americans who say they have 'very little' or volunteer they have no confidence is currently the highest on record, at 46 percent.
"Confidence in television news has never been higher than its initial 46 percent reading in 1993 and has averaged 27 percent, considerably higher than the current 11 percent. This is the fourth consecutive year that confidence in TV news is below 20 percent. And for just the second time in the trend, a majority of Americans, 53 percent, now say they have very little or no confidence in TV news."
Proving yet again, we invariably reap what we sow.
Dictating breakfast
Overheard in Walmart the other day: An elderly man and wife are standing in the cereal aisle staring at the dizzying array of choices. "Well, hurry up and pick one," she says in a scolding voice. "Look, right over there is the kind you always eat, so just get it." He continues to examine the choices another minute.
"So what are you waiting for?"
"Well," he responded, "I was noticing this cereal here has the same ingredients but is $1 cheaper.
"Naaaah, you don't want that even if it is cheaper. You know you always eat the other one."
"Well, I just..."
"No, you're getting the one you always get and that's that," she commanded.
Care to guess which one "he" picked for his breakfast?
'Golden' years?
Overheard in Walgreens that same day, a conversation between two older ladies waiting side by side in chairs for their prescriptions.
"You know, " says one, "it seems like I'm in here about every other day for some kind of medicine or another, and I never got sick when was younger. It's become so expensive, even with insurance. And it's not like I'm getting any younger."
The woman beside her looked down and shook her head in sympathetic agreement. "I hear you. I feel the same way."
A moment's silence intervened before the first woman added, "Golden years, my fanny!"
Lost phone--again
Overheard in conversation between two women in a supermarket. "Well, where did you have it last?" Could you have laid it down when you were looking at something? We should retrace our steps from the time we entered."
The other woman appears deep in thought. "Maybe you can try calling me and we can listen for the ring," she says after a moment.
Her friend takes her cell phone from her purse and dials. They both listen attentively but hear nothing while shoppers are shuffling and talking around them. "Are you sure you had it when you came in?"
Clearly exasperated, the one without a phone says, "Here I go again. This is the second time this has happened in a week. You'd think I'd learn to hang it around my neck on a cord, wouldn't you?"
Bagging eggs
Overheard in the same supermarket. A man turns to his wife and says, "I can't believe the prices of these eggs! And I don't even need a dozen. Heck, I only eat two for breakfast twice a week."
She peers in the carton then turns to him. "I wonder if they would sell us just four? I think it would be good business at this price to put four eggs in plastic bags and sell them that way."
"Wait here, I'll go ask," he says.
Back for tests
It was back to Little Rock and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences last week. Six weeks had passed since Dr. James Suen and his team performed a seven-hour-long surgery to remove the tenacious squamous cell cancer from the left side of my neck and head.
Other than having to remove the outer carotid artery and jugular vein, the vagus nerve on my left side also had to be taken, leaving me with half a voice box and no feeling on the left side of my tongue or upper left shoulder.
Dr. Suen had applied a surgical technique that enables me to still speak in a raspy voice, and I'd returned for him to check how that was progressing and to have a radiological swallowing test to see where things stood with that.
The anticipated high point of this visit was the night Jeanetta and I would spend at the comfortable and well-appointed Home for Healing on the edge of the medical center's campus. This nonprofit home exists to serve cancer patients and their families and parents of neonatal infants, at little or no cost.
I'll have more to share about this place with two guest wings that has served more than 5,000 UAMS patients since opening 20 years ago this month.
Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at [email protected].