No News is Good News

I have a bone to pick with you.  Yes you.  I read the Ledger, the South Shore’s paper of record, every day this winter and didn’t find a shred of news in it.  Not one scintilla.  It wasn’t any lack of reporting on their part either.  The Ledger’s got a crack staff working all the nooks and crannies round here and if something was happening, they’d be right on it.  They’ve got some fine reporters up there.  That guy, A. Press, seems to be everywhere all at once.  Same for that Reuters fella and Mr. Knight Ridder.  Hard working reporters every damn one of them.  Nope, it’s not the Ledger’s fault.

To be perfectly frank about it, you’re the problem.  Think about it.  What did you do yesterday?  Wouldn’t make much of a news story now would it? Do you know what this winter’s most popular headline was?  Snow.  Whoo, boy you don’t see that every day - unless you live here and it’s somewhere between December and April.  Face it - it’s been snowing here for millions of years, yet nothing that any of us did this winter was more interesting than frozen water falling out of the sky for the umpteen-billionth time.  That’s pathetic.

To cure this epidemic of newslessness, we’re all going to have to pitch in.  As a self-appointed community leader, (aren’t they all) I myself will supervise Scituate’s entry into the world of the newsworthy (and not by driving my motorcycle back into Cohasset, smart guy).  I will personally hand out everyone’s assignment and I expect you all to do the work. 

First thing we need down here is a big lottery winner.  There’s nothing more important than a local who has a pile of money fall on his head.  I’ve narrowed the candidates for this one down to a select few relatives, or I may take the job myself.  And I don’t want any embarassingly ambivalent winners either, like Quincy’s Mr. Tang who isn’t sure that 18mil is gonna bring him happiness.  Somebody better tell this guy the only question on the citizenship test is “Does money bring happiness?”.

Next thing we need, and this is probably our biggest news-deficit, is some serious gunplay.  I don’t know whether its a lack of gun-nuts (I doubt that) or just that the ones we do have can’t hit anything (probably closer to the truth) but come on folks, there are more guns than people in this country and between 16,000 of us we can’t generate one good shoot-em-up story?  Somebody’s not trying very hard.

And then there’s the politics. I just got back from Town Meeting, and boy do I feel refreshed.  Haven’t slept that well in years. To call it dreary would be flattery.    That giant sucking sound you hear?  Scituatians flying out the gym door as Article 22 dribbles to a close.  We held a vote afterwards in my house.  We voted unanimously to indefinitely postpone future attendance at Town Meeting.

Next up is the election.  I can hardly wait. To hear these people talk, you’d think they were running for vice president of a stamp club.  Where I come from elections routinely pit God-hating, America-last, gay, pinko-commie secular humanists against misogynist, neanderthal, homophobic, reactionary, fascist hypocrites.  Up there, they know a demon when they see one.  Down here, the bad guys are NIMBYs.  Oo, that hurts.

Then there’s the police.  If we’re gonna make the big-time here, we have to do something about the police.  Take this item from last week’s police log:

Possible mouse in closet.

How did the police respond? Knowing them, they probably shooed the mouse away and spoke soothingly to the homeowner. That’s a big help.  A police department that was really looking after our need for news would:

Evacuate the neighborhood and surround the house.

Wait for the reporters to arrive, then open telephone negotiations with the mouse.

Shoot the homeowner, after mistaking him for the mouse, then charge him with resisting arrest.

Begin a 48 hour standoff during which a National Enquirer report identifies the mouse as a leader in the international Satanic Ritual Abuse conspiracy.

Break off negotiations when the mouse threatens to rummage through the refrigerator, then burn the house down with those special FBI-brand, combination napalm/tear gas shells. 

Spend two weeks searching the smoking rubble, unsuccessfully, for the mouse’s body.

Ticket and tow the homeowners bullet-riddled minivan as an “abandoned vehicle”.

Promote everyone involved in the operation.

An operation like that is worth two months of banner headlines which is why big cities spend so much time and money creating newsworthy police departments.  It reduces the newsmaking burden on everyone else.  Without the police department’s help, this job falls to each one of us.

When I lived up in “the city”, I never felt the need to create news because it was happening all around me all the time.  Murders, riots, fatal police beatings, elections that lasted for months (with multiple recounts), sex scandals and federal investigations - I could open up the paper every morning confident that I’d get fifty cents worth of entertainment.  Down here, well ...  the dog used to get really excited about the paperboy showing up every afternoon, barking and slobbering all over the windows, but after six months of reading the Ledger he doesn’t even turn down the TV anymore.  Just gives me that look - “Three dollars a week would buy a lot of rawhide.”

If I were back in the city, I’d wait for someone else to fix this problem, but now that I’m a full-fledged suburban (or is that rural?) communitarian, I know that I have to fix it myself.  From now on, every time I step out the door, I’ll be looking for newsmaking opportunities.  Until my mail-order machine gun arrives, though, you’ll all have to take up the slack.

Don’t forget to tune in next week, when I discuss the state’s exciting new commuter rail alternative - free, direct jet service from Marshfield to Logan, leaving Marshfield airport every day at 11:30am, and returning at noon.

John Rodley is a local newsmaker.  If there’s no news, he makes it up ... and posts it every week on - http://www.rodley.com - now featuring real Greenbush info straight from the office of the Town’s T liaison.