Busy-ness + Anchor's Away

The last 72 hours have been, as much as the forthcoming 48 will likely be, a blur. I think I've been running on autopilot, and for the most part everything seems to be functioning properly, so I guess I have no complaints. Generally speaking, I've been juggling a half-dozen projects, interspersed with -- and superceded by -- a couple of huge ones. It's sort of like a rambling, meandering forest fire -- rather than needing to sort priorities, mini-fires break out until they become medium-sized, and I handle them on an ad-hoc basis so they don't become big ones. It's sort of like playing the Smash The Groundhog, where a furry thing pops out of a hole and you slam a mallet onto it before it recedes into the darkness below, except the groundhogs in my world are clients.

Come to think of it, not that far off, actually ;-)

Trying to make sense of it all is sort of futile, especially given that I'm still in the middle of this harried, frenetic, no-time-to-think busy period. But the crux of it is that I've dealt with three major deadlines in the space of, literally, two weeks, and the ongoing pressure of handling another half-dozen things that have time deadlines that can be measured in minutes rather than days. So as the paper piles up in the background, I just chip away at the top of the wall and hope it doesn't get too high. So far, so good. It's sort of manageable, although it in many ways feels like I'm trying to walk up a down escalator. It can be done, but only given the knowledge that there's got to be a better way.

About the only thing these days that makes me smile before going to sleep is the tandem of my relationship with my other half and my father's health; both seem to be improving every day, and not a day goes by that each makes me smile or be thankful in some way, shape or form.

'Nuff said.

* * *

In the meantime, in the real world, as opposed to that of the surreal, I noticed Dan Rather anchored his final telecast of the CBS Evening News last night. I didn't catch it -- I don't bother getting news from television, opting instead for print and internet sources. However, it occurred to me that his departure, marred by the recent flap over the legitimacy of President Bush's National Guard record, and the subsequent revelation that Mr. Rather's source(s) were not legitimate, is going to be his long-lasting legacy. That, and the REM ode to Mr. Rather's notable encounter with a random individual known as "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" should not be the man's epitah; unfortunately, it seems that this will be the final summation of a career and a man, each of which deserves better.

Having said that, as I observed when Tom Brokaw recently departed NBC's nightly news telecast, should a news anchor be a celebrity? I am sure Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings are all intelligent men, but I have rarely turned to any of them to interpret or report anything other than a breaking, have-to-see-it-on-TV national story, like the OJ car "chase" or the LA riots. I'd much prefer to read New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's take on events here and/or around the globe; whether it's my distaste for pre-packaged news being interrupted by commercials for toothpaste and deli meat or the cutesy, family-friendly, cookie-cutter news broadcast, I've lost interest in seeing a guy wearing a tie and a parka tell me it's cold outside or that gas prices are perilously high. Or maybe I just distrust any news feed that requires animated graphics of cartoon animals to better illustrate its point.

The point is, as much as I'm focusing on my apathy regarding Dan Rather's retirement, the fact is I'm mentioning and reacting to it. So in either case, it's still on the agenda; and that begets the question: why is the person reading the news part of the news itself? Shouldn't the bigger issues of the day, ie the hesitant US observance/endorsement of limited Hizbollah involvement in Lebanese politics, the ongoing conflict in Iraq (and the constant changing of its nature), and the perpetually rising cost of gas be more important? It's got to be more valuable to us as a culture, both in the short- and long-term, than revisiting the last 27 years since Walter Cronkite became a member of the has-beens.

I lament that we've increasingly become a culture of people-watchers; we're reality-TV junkies rather than achievers, water-cooler debaters over Oscar fashions rather than the more significant issues movies present to the populace, and our biggest topic of random conversation and/or thought is over the current weather rather than real problems that need to be addressed rather than buried. We're trained to absorb the events of the day passively rather than react and/or act on them, and, I suppose, that's in part what inspires my apathy over Mr. Rather's (or even Mr. Brokaw's) departure.

So, put another way, if we're not to kill the messenger for bringing the news, why should we care, for the most part, who that messenger is?

A wise man once prophesized that passive acceptance of others' activity leads to inactivity. It remains to be seen whether he is right.