Facts Being Left Out In Conversations
By: Tim Timmons
Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Arlene Francis . . .
* * *
WHAT’S THE old saying about those who live in glass houses? Most days we put out a couple of newspapers with a lot, I mean A LOT, of words. So I shouldn’t be throwing any stones about mistakes.
Sometimes I just can’t help myself.
Here are a couple of examples of things that got momentum on social media recently. Did you hear about the wife of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Olena Zelenska? She reportedly went on a million-dollar-plus shopping spree in fancy-schmancy New York shops.
With her husband begging the U.S. government for money to fight the Russians, you can imagine that didn’t set very well with a lot of folks. Social media went wild, people passionately screaming how wrong it was for her husband to be asking for U.S. taxpayer dollars while his wife was buying stuff you and I couldn’t afford in a lifetime.
Except it didn’t happen.
Then there’s the one about NFL star Travis Kelce and musical superstar Taylor Swift. The two apparently are dating and Swift has gone to some of Kelce’s KC Chiefs games. Out of that came the social media report that Travis’ mom didn’t like Taylor . . . and that set off big fireworks. Taylor’s fans – called Swifties – verbally ripped Kelce’s mom. How could anyone not like their beloved Taylor? It went on and on.
Did anyone stop and get the facts? Of course not. From all the quotes and videos this reporter found, Kelce’s mom never said any such thing.
Or how about protests on college campuses today ripping Israel? No, I’m not talking about the lunacy that comes from Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley (and we could throw Indiana’s Andre Carson in there as well), I’m talking about college professors, schools and students taking ill-informed stances regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
Are their two sides to this issue? At least. The Palestinian people and Israelis have a long history of conflict and it’s a fair debate if you want to argue the rights and wrongs from that region for the past couple thousand years. But nothing, and I mean nothing, justifies what the terror organization Hamas did on Oct. 7 – killing men, women, children and babies.
Never mind that a Hamas official walked off a BBC interview when he was asked why the terrorist group killed innocents. He started out saying that Hamas conducted a military operation and added he could “confirm and assure again and again that there was no command to kill any civilians.” He added that Hamas “had no intention or decision to harm civilians.”
But the interviewer, God bless him, kept pointing out the fact that civilians – a lot of them – were indeed killed. Hamas’ own cameras recorded the atrocities.
What’d the official do? Ripped off the microphone and stormed out the door.
Did that slow down the campus protests? Not even close.
The sad truth is that we have become a soundbite society – forget the facts. The lessons of yesteryear are mostly lost. We’ve tossed God out of our schools, common sense out of the public square and facts from our arguments.
And we are worse off for it.
* * *
TODAY IS Nov. 2 and we’re only three weeks from Thanksgiving. I hope you don’t mind, but this year we are giving our employees a little extra time off and we are not publishing a Thanksgiving or Black Friday newspaper. We’ll be back on Saturday, just in time to ramp up the countdown to Christmas!
* * *
FORGIVE THE old sportswriter in me, but the fact that the Colts are finding new ways to lose games is driving me nuts (OK, OK, it’s only a short walk).
When rookie sensation Anthony Richardson went down with a season-ending shoulder injury, so did most reasonable expectations for the season. However, after the Colts beat the Titans on Oct. 8 to
improve to 3-2, some of us started to think that perhaps all was not lost. Even after Jacksonville thumped us the following week to even the record at 3-3, we didn’t give up. After all, Jax just seems to have our number, right?
But then came Cleveland and New Orleans, two very winnable games. And then came a flurry of turnovers and two losses . . . and very questionable play calling. Could anyone explain how two of the best running backs in the NFL get basically left out of the game plan when the outcome was still in doubt?
Sigh.
Next up is Frank Reich’s Carolina Panthers. If the Colts manage to lose that one, then could someone call Duke Tumatoe and ask for a 2023 version of Lord Help Our Colts?
* * *
SOME OF you remember Arlene Francis, right? She was an actress and entertainer who also was a regular on a slew of 1960s game shows – including What’s My Line, the Match Game, Password and To Tell the Truth. She was pretty, witty and wise . . . to swipe a phrase. She passed away at the age of 93 in 2001.
-Two cents, which is about how much timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically in the times. Timmons is the chief executive officer of sagamore news media, the company that owns the noblesville times. He is also a proud noblesville high school graduate and can be contacted at ttimmons@thetimes24-7.com