For the love of Books, Newspapers & Radio
Back in the 60’s when there was only over the air television and man was on the mission to the moon. The transistor radio brought joy to listener, when we listened to the music of the day, or our favorite sports teams. It was radio was the technology of the day.
We learned about news and people of our thru our books, magazines and newspapers. We couldn’t wait to read the box scores, or look forward to see the pictures in Life and Look magazines. We past the time by reading, whether it was the newspaper, comic books or Tom Sawyer, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Nancy Drew, or any other favorite novels of the day.
As we listened to Jack Buck and Harry Caray paint the scenes when describing the St. Louis Cardinal’s game or Lyell Bremser describe the Nebraska Football game. We could only imagine what it was like to be there. Radio provided a lifetime of memories, listening to World Series games while keeping score on the blackboard at school. Listening to the game or the latest hits while we were doing our household chores. We listened to the radio while eating our breakfast and reading the newspaper. Long before there were video games, we had books that held our attention and passed the time. Listening to the Radio and reading are thinking man’s activities, today; we can still listen to the ball games or listen to our favorite tunes on the radio. There is limited amount of well thought out provocative written articles and books. Moreover there are liberals that want to exercise the use of power and fear to possibly bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Because today’s liberal has been unable to compete in arena of ideas, or create an enjoyable, creative, profitable way to get their agenda across the radio airwaves, the last area where the liberal left has been unable to conquer. There are many types of talk radio formats, from Alaska to Wyoming and from apples to zippers to can find a talk radio format to suit your taste.
While the Political talk show giants are where the liberals point their cannons, all of formats of the radio genre could be affected by the assault from liberals; with the demise of some written outlets. The written tradition that we treasured is slowly slipping away.
Recently Archbishop Chaput of Denver stated in a recent speech that “Today’s advances in technology have increased the sources of human information that the average layperson can access. That’s a good thing. But they’ve also undermined the Intellectual discipline that we once had when our main tools of communication were books or print publications. This is not a good development. In fact, it’s a very dangerous thing in a democracy, which is a form of government that demands intellectual and moral maturity from its citizens to survive." Further he states:
“Thomas Jefferson, writing during his presidency, put the importance of a free press this way: “ No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. Jefferson’s words are striking because their defense of a free press emphasizes that freedom is a means and not an end in itself. Notice what he defines as the purpose of press freedom: the reason and truth needed for self-government. But in our own time, the news establishment – even when discussing serious issues – often seems less interested in reason and truth than in what Christopher Lasch called “ideological gestures;” in other words, sound bites and tribal slogans designed to shape our thought rather than encourage it.”
In today’s fast paced society, it is necessary to take the time to listen to the radio, think about the topics that discussed, take time away from the technology, put on an old vinyl record on the turntable, sit down with a beverage of your choice and read. Provoke the mind, stimulate your brain. Society will be better off for it.
