Yesterday was Pearl Harbor day but I didn’t make note of it on the blog, Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform. I can’t tell you I forgot about it nor will I make some excuse about how I mentioned it every year that I have been on social media.
Besides this post isn’t because I feel the need to make excuses or apologize it is more of a place for me think out loud about how A Day That Shall Live in Infamy is receiving less attention than it once did because those who lived through it are dying off in droves.
Maybe it is sticking with me because I have been working with my son on his Bar Mitzvah speech and have been working on mine. Maybe it is because I am thinking about what is important to pass along and I am wondering if I should be concerned or upset that I didn’t see anything about the day online, on TV or in the news.
It doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there but it does mean it wasn’t prominent enough for me to have noticed it and so I am thinking about whether there is significance there. Seventy-three years is a long time and it makes sense that some of it has faded and that so many of the people that lived through it are gone.
But humans sometimes have short memories which I suspect is part of why history is often cyclical.
One Of The Benefits Of Blogging
I have often thought that one of the benefits of blogging is the similarity to what Guttenberg did with the printing press. You don’t have to be royalty to record your thoughts and ideas on anything and everything, not to mention the potential to reach millions or even billions of people with your message.
Granted relatively few will see their words/thoughts/ideas receive that kind of exposure but the possibility exists in a way that it never did before.
People are funny and you never know what will resonate with them. I didn’t receive a ton of comments on Does JFK Mean Anything To Generation X? but there has been quite a bit of traffic from it.
Once We Were Kings is one of my favorite posts because it was fun to write and I felt like the words flowed freely but it didn’t get the same response that The 27th Biggest Lie In Blogging did.
My guess is the distinction is that the latter is the kind of linkbait that really grabs bloggers and people who are interested in social media. So many of us are interested in taking our blogs to the next level so we’ll spend all sorts of time consuming content that suggests it will help us do that.
BTW, I am growing to hate that expression “to the next level” with the same sort of fervor with which I hate words like “epic” and “amazing.” They are both improperly and over used.
Not every experience is amazing and or epic yet people seem to have lost the ability to use any other word. They ought to find a way to add those to the 33 Dumbest Things People Did in 2013.
SpaghettiOs apologizes for Pearl Harbor tweet
I didn’t hear about this kerfuffle until Sunday morning which I suppose proves I am doing a much better job of disconnecting from social media on the weekends.
I looked at the offensive tweet and thought for a moment about whether it bothered me or not. I kind of see both sides but I also think we are living during a time in which people go looking for things to be pissed off about.
And it made me wonder what would have happened if social media had been around during WW II and how people would have reacted to Dr. Seuss the political cartoonist.
It is an impossible question to answer because so much time has passed and the world is so very different but yet in some ways nothing much has changed.
I look at cartoons like this one and with a few changes have no trouble imagining it running right after 9/11.
What about you? What do you think? I’d love to get your thoughts in the comments. I know there is an American bend to this post but the issues in general can be applied to any country.
LoriThat sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. I think we only have so much “bandwidth” to use and something has to give so things from the past that are important but not necessarily experienced first hand might be among those things that are stuffed somewhere inside our mental closets.
Hi Josh,
I wonder if, as we have so many more present issues to “remember” if the older ones are taking a back seat. It makes sense to me on a personal level. I grieved the loss of my mother for nearly 7 years but now I think so much more of the loss of my son that I barely have any more grief left for Mom. Do you think we are like that as a culture?
Just wondering.
And btw, write more about “I am growing to hate that expression “to the next level” with the same sort of fervor with which I hate words like “epic” and “amazing.” They are both improperly and over used.” I’d like to hear more. It needs to be said! LOL
Lori