Years ago, when advertising cigarettes on TV was allowed, Viceroy had an arresting series of commercials with the theme of doing something for which you have no qualification. “No, I’m not an orthopedic surgeon (as he attempts to set a broken leg); I’m a postman who thinks for himself;” the ubiquitous Viceroy always dangling from his mouth.
Thinking for oneself, particularly if not relying on a cigarette to augment your intelligence, is a good thing. With all the news roiling around following the Ferguson, MO returning no indictment in the Michael Brown tragedy one can find whatever opinion one wants.
Robert McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney, went to great lengths to explain how all the available forensic evidence had been made available to the grand jury. He did that, so he said, in order that there would be no suspicion of collusion or jury tampering. As he no doubt expected, everyone chose the information that became available to support their previous conclusions.
It became apparent that many witnesses interpreted the events in vastly different ways. That’s not a surprise, given the rapidity and horror of what happened. Many different scenarios were presented as factual when the forensics showed that some were extremely unlikely and others total fraudulent. Some “eye witnesses” weren’t even present and finally admitted that was “what they thought” had happened. The news media, in some cases, emphasized the points that supported the previously held positions. The calls for calm and restraint in the face of legitimate amazement fell on deaf ears and in the riots that followed, more than two dozen businesses were burned and many others looted.
Some would argue there were grounds for concern that facts had been altered to promote a particular result. True or not, what many people questioned was the destructive violence perpetrated against establishments that clearly were innocent of any complicity; they just were at hand when sensible thinking was abandoned The same thing had happened, but to a lesser degree, in August after the shooting and many wondered then why the response was looting.
The best answer to the whole problem, at least from my point of view, has been given by David Brooks of The New York Times and Mark Shields, a syndicated TV commentator. On the PBS News Hour last Friday Brooks said that given the preponderance of evidence he believed the grand jury had reached the proper conclusion but he went on to say that the degree of violence was not an outcry against racism as much as it was a reaction of rage that has many roots.
Unlike violence in the civil rights movement which was clearly an issue of right versus wrong, the underlying problems of poverty, unemployment, job discrimination, inequities in law enforcement based on racial profiling, and a host of other societal issues have led to a free-floating rage from those who are affected by them. That has allowed the looting, the violence, and the charges of racially motivated actions all to gain traction.
Pick your news sources carefully. Without naming names we all understand that the primary motivation of television news is to attract viewers and in order to do that “facts” are sometimes presented in such a way as to have appeal to the greatest number of viewers. Few business models in journalism are founded on unbiased presentation of the facts but rather on what audience will be most attracted.
Human nature leads most of us to value the resources that support our view. The problem is that many of our opinions are based on incomplete and sometimes totally inaccurate data. Following a single source of information is always a perilous path. Measuring what we are told by what we already believe is equally dangerous. Brooks and Shields are just as human as the rest of us; they have their personal opinions but do not see the world through the tunnel vision of their ideology; objectivity comes from opposing views dispassionately presented.
As arcane as the Viceroy ads were, there is something to be said for thinking for oneself. That does not extend to fortifying our own opinions while disregarding new data. It does mandate listening critically and carefully, remembering that we almost never have enough information to be as knowledgeable as we like to imagine ourselves. Beware of the pundit who poses only answers but asks no questions. We should include ourselves in that warning.
Hayden Hollingsworth
