by Blake Proctor
Still only a thin dime for 12! We live in an era in which it is important to have an opinion. Not necessarily a smart or important one – almost any opinion will do as long as it’s forcefully expressed, and at full volume.
It wasn’t all that long ago that opinions were something carefully considered and weighed, so that they’d stand the test of time and reflect well on the author.
Thinkers were like gourmet chefs laboring over an elaborate meal they wanted to be perfect; but today, opinions are Big Macs – thrown together hastily, served by the billions, and not very good for you.
When it comes to opinions, I’m afraid we are all living at an intellectual McDonald’s, where it’s volume, volume, volume.
You probably don’t want to have as many opinions as you have. But everyone around you has them. There’s cable news, of course: Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck have plenty of opinions.
When you sell opinions for money, like Keith and Glenn do, it doesn’t take long to catch on that the more opinions you have, the more money you make. But here’s the problem: They’re not very smart opinions. And they’re forcing everyone around them, including you, to have far too many opinions.
We post them on Facebook; we Tweet them; we express them in comments on Huffington Post; why, they may even end up here in Bladen Online!
We get angry too, just like Keith and Glenn. What’s the point in having an opinion if it’s not an angry opinion? It’s hard to tell the good guys when one side is self-righteously accusing the other side of lacking civility; and the response is to defend that lack as if it’s a good thing.
Opinion inflation has invaded every aspect of our lives. The Internet is a Petri dish of opinion inflation, breeding commentary like bacteria! Because few people do anything interesting or have anything factual to report, they toss off a short opinion. That, in turn, leads to opinion hyper-inflation.
Just look at the comments section of any blog. Opinions quickly devolve from Big Macs to rat poison. Civility makes only a rare appearance, and facts are no longer facts.
There was a time when thoughtful people tried to be balanced. The old style political columnists were famous for saying nothing. They presented both sides of any given issue in an “on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-
Walter Cronkite voiced so few opinions as CBS anchor that when he finally did give one – about the Vietnam War – it changed the course of history. Of course, those days were boring.
There is a certain irony, I admit, to expressing an opinion about opinions. And perhaps I should be grateful. Not only am I more entertained these days, but when I’m feeling lazy, I can switch from thinking too much to not thinking at all. I’m so surrounded by opinions, that I often don’t need any of my own.
I can turn on Fox or MSNBC and adopt an entire political philosophy without knowing a thing. Of course, the problem is, when I share that philosophy, I don’t sound intelligent – I sound like a drunk at a bar arguing with an empty barstool.
On his old HBO show, Dennis Miller would end his trademark rants with “Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.” He was right – I could be wrong too. But he was way too opinionated.
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