I want to write about yelling. My friend jwer is of the opinion that the reason people watch Fox News is not necessarily to become informed about issues (which would be like trying to learn about the sun by burying yourself in a dark, airtight tomb fifty miles underground), but because they like to witness the blowhard television “personalities” yelling at their guests. At first, I found the idea that the sort of people who tune in to Fox News would find yelling entertaining decidedly unsurprising. But then jwer lumped Judge Judy in with the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and I was all, like, oh no you di’n’t!
Judge Judy yells at people, and I enjoy it. I don’t, on the other hand, find this entertaining in the same way I find, say Monty Python entertaining, or “I Love Lucy.” Rather, it appeals to my sense of justice and my low opinion of the American public. When Judge Judy gets some mouth-breathing slimeball in her clutches, someone who has selfishly or ignorantly or cruelly hurt someone else, and she verbally obliterates that person, it lifts my spirits after a day of watching that sort of person prevail.
When Bill O’Reilly yells, on the other hand, he does so not to clarify matters, not to achieve justice, but rather to obscure the facts, drown out logic, and control the debate. It is, in other words, the bray of a petulant, manipulative child—and that is the exact mindset he appeals to. Bill O’Reilly is the very sort of person Judge Judy would destroy on the spot with laser beams that shoot from her eyes. So I don’t put them in the same category.
I have been thinking a bit about yelling lately, in a variety of contexts. One of the things I most love to do, for example, is listen to music. (For this reason, you'd think it’s fortunate I married a composer, but I very infrequently get to hear Rob’s creations first-hand.) I used to listen to the radio while I was driving; I have a variety of stations programmed into my car’s tuner. But a funny thing has happened lately: my formerly favorite stations have been virtually unlistenable. I’ve had to flip from frequency to frequency in search of disc jockeys who aren’t shrieking insincerely and commercials that aren’t a blaring cacophony. Even much of the music, music I once loved, is now fingernails on a blackboard. Ordinarily, I’d think that I’m just going crazy and becoming more sensitive to noise, but I truly suspect that society at large is going crazy and becoming more insensitive to noise. It seems like most of our public conversation has transformed into desperate, interminable screaming.
The infantile Bill O’Reilly’s famed catchphrase is, ironically, “Shut up!” If nothing else, that’s a sentiment I’m starting to appreciate.
