We All Need To Just Slow Down And That Includes CNN And The Rest Of Mainstream Media

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Why are we in such a hurry?  I find myself being in a hurry all the time.  I come to a red light and I don’t want to sit at a red light.  It’s telling me to stop.  Every social fiber of my being, every fiber of my being that has been socialized, that can hear, can see, can read, everything in every part of my daily life tells me to go, go, go, faster, faster, don’t stop.  You must go faster.  It’s like Jeff Goldblum in the back of the Jeep in Jurassic Park being chased by the T-Rex.  Check out today’s audio and transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I’d also like to go back and reset some old ground that we covered in the first hour, which is the embarrassing spectacle of CNN’s coverage yesterday of the purported identification of a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing and that an arrest, not that an arrest was imminent but that an arrest had been made, that they had the guy in custody.  It was all thanks to some Lord & Taylor video.  Folks, I don’t know how to describe the spectacle and the embarrassment that should have accompanied that when you go on international news and you’re reporting things that are just not true and they’re not happening.  It took them almost two hours to fess up: We admit, there’s no arrest; our reliable sources — this is one of the things I’m going to ask Andy McCarthy about.

These guys that run around going, [mocking] “I have anonymous reliable sources,” so much for anonymous reliable sources.  Maybe that’s why they’re anonymous, because they’re not so reliable.  If you divulge who your reliable anonymous source was, [mocking] “All right, all right, I admit my anonymous reliable source was the mail boy on the mail cart in the office who overheard Mrs. McGillicuddy talking to Mr. Jones about some guy that they may go investigate and they thought they were going to take a ride out and see his apartment and they mistook that for an arrest conversation.”  Where’s the responsibility there?  The rush to judgment and the rush to if it bleeds it leads and [mocking] “We’ve got to be the first to get this because it’s going to be on our résumé.  We got you the news first.”  What’s this rush that we’re in?

I haven’t heard anyone, or I’ve heard few people say that the reason we need to find out who the Boston Marathon bomber is quickly, identify and arrest them, is to prevent him or her or them from perpetrating another act.  There are other marathons coming up.  As a matter of fact, I saw a story yesterday in the Tennessee newspaper, I think it was National Daily News, saying there’s a big race coming up in Nashville and they were already being notified by the Feds, [mocking] “Hey, Saxby Chambliss sent us in there.  I say, we’re gonna tell you, boy, how you gonna run, I say, how you gonna run your security?”  If all the news media were out there saying: We’ve got to find this guy.  This is a death race.  This is a race to save lives.  We have to stop him from hitting again.  He’s a serial pressure cooker bomber.  That’s not what it is.  We just want to be the first.  We just want to be the first.

Why are we in such a hurry?  I find myself being in a hurry all the time.  I come to a red light and I don’t want to sit at a red light.  It’s telling me to stop.  Every social fiber of my being, every fiber of my being that has been socialized, that can hear, can see, can read, everything in every part of my daily life tells me to go, go, go, faster, faster, don’t stop.  You must go faster.  It’s like Jeff Goldblum in the back of the Jeep in Jurassic Park being chased by the T-Rex.  [mocking Goldblum] “Must go faster.  Must go faster.”  Ultimately what does he do?  He leans on the gear shift, pops the Jeep into neutral and the T-Rex almost catches them.  We can’t even be bothered to be stopping at red lights.  That’s an inconvenience.  We’re not happy unless the light is green.  We want to be told to go, go, go.  Anytime anyone says, [mocking] “Stop, slow down, relax, take it easy, it’s okay, enjoy the ride.  Stop and smell the roses why don’t you?” — “I don’t have time to smell roses.  I gotta get this out on Facebook today.”  We live in an age when everything is hurried and everything is rushed and everything must be done in a timely if not a super, über timely manner.  How can you possibly have any manner of appreciation for beautiful things when you don’t have the time to stop and be appreciative of them?  You see something that you may actually approve of or that you may actually go: Wow, that’s really, really amazing.  I think I’d like to just sit here and stare at this.  Think about this for a moment, ladies and gentlemen.  Andrew, do you know what an impressionist is?

AG:  Maybe but not positive.

Mike:  In the art world, what’s an impressionist?  You don’t recall?

AG:  Like a painter.

Mike:  That’s right.  You always wind up giving the right answer.

AG:  I’m bound to one time say something that’s completely wrong.

Mike:  You know what an impressionist is.  The only reason I know this is I used to be an art major.  Do you know the methodology of how they painted?

AG:  The tracing and then eventually the painting?

Mike:  No.  What an impressionist did is they would take themselves to the, let’s say you’re going to paint some building on the other side of the Seine River or something to that effect.  You would take yourself to the river and gather where the artists were all painting. This was a big pastime.  Before there were photographs and iPhones and what have you, you had to paint things and draw things.  They would put their easel down and set their little station up.  I can’t remember who it was, if it was Manet or Monet or Matisse that first came up with the idea of impressionism.  What you would do, and this was the novelty of it — I realize I am not a tour guide at NOMA.  If I make a mistake here, art critics, forgive me.  I will correct the record.  I’m drawing from memory.

What they would do is they would plop themselves down at the particular place that they wanted to paint and they would paint.  The impressionist would plop themselves down and they would stare at the scene that they were about to paint, stare, stare, stare at the scene.  Notice they’re not moving.  There’s no green light here.  There’s a red light, a big, giant light.  They’re just sitting there, staring across the river, staring at the landscape, stare, stare, stare, stare, okay, time to paint.  They then turned away.  They took the easel and turned it in the other direction and tried to paint the scene from memory, in other words, from their impression, thus the term impressionist.

This is a novel endeavor that most certainly would make most people think that you were some sort of a bombing plotter today, wouldn’t it?  You’re sitting there staring at a building.  Let’s say you were going to paint the famous bell tower at Loyola University on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans.  Let’s just say that in the process of this painting, that you decided you were going to be an impressionist.  So you sat there and stared and stared and stared.  You had boxes.  You had little containers with handles on them at your feet, people passing by, [mocking] “Why is that weirdo staring at the bell tower.  He’s got boxes here.  Oh, my God, there’s ammonium nitrate in those boxes.  He’s going to bomb the bell tower.  He’s going to blow a streetcar up when it crosses by.”  We would think the person was up to no good.  If you’re just sitting there staring at things, you’ve got to be up to no good.  The impressionist had to sit there and be immobile.  He had to just concentrate.

The point is that you’re not allowed to be an impressionist today.  Your impression of what something looks like, you only get about a second and a half to actually look at it, if you get that long.  We’re so busy creating the next greatest, best thing that we rarely take the time out to enjoy the last greatest, best thing.  Slow down.  Slow down.  This is what drives the insanity of the 24-hour news cycle.  This is why every television station on earth is not necessarily in the business of being in a public service to report the news.  They want to be the first because they want to get the credit for being the first.  I suppose it’s part of the human condition to desire to achieve things.  I don’t really have a problem with that.  What I have a problem with is that now the achievement of things is the primary and the method and the propriety in which you achieve the thing doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter how you get there.  There’s no virtue in gathering the news.  There’s no virtue in almost everything that we do.  There are few things left that people are actually — see last week’s debacle at the Masters golf tournament as an example here.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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