Time-wasting trash in the old media

"I, who never never drink, was forced to go toe to toe with George. Because you have to man up. So we drank like four bottles of wine; I got (totally plastered). It was ugly." (So was the writing. The words were easier to clean up than than the values.)

Ian Gillespie, who writes The City column for The London Free Press, was onto something when he wrote his Wednesday piece, "Time-wasting trash poisoning youth."

Gillespie writes, "The experts call it "junk culture" and many are alarmed . . . "

Gillespie quotes Doug Mann, a professor with the University of Western Ontario's faculty of information and media studies. "Junk culture is inherent in new media . . . when you get new media moving in, it changes the way we see the world . . . "

Wait! I've made a big mistake. Please forgive me. I've taken a paragraph from a glowing article on actor George Clooney. An article that in its own words comes "precariously close to gushing."

How did I ever confuse a Sun Media piece by that insightful reporter Kevin Williamson, about the "perfect" man — George Clooney — and the Ian Gillespie column on ideas that poison our youth?

The behaviour condoned, no celebrated, in The London Free Press/Sun Media cover story, "Class act is no act", must be acceptable behaviour as it is clearly sanctioned by the old media.

Oh, oh! This blog is part of the new media. No wonder I got my stories mixed. As Mann points out, " . . . people's basic skills will fade away." Mine must be fading already.

But, I bet I'm not the only with fading skills. People who consume four bottles of wine at a sitting, just to prove their masculine prowess, will have grossly faded skills by the end of the evening binge.

Sadly, if they are small in stature, like many underage, youthful drinkers, even their skill to simply breath may fade. Alcohol poisoning fatalities do not happen all that often but these are totally preventable tragedies. When I was in high school, a good, bright young boy died from an alcohol overdose (AOD). He went to a high school dance, got drunk, went home, passed out in bed and was asphyxiated during the night. His mother discovered her dead son in the morning.

According to Gillespie, "Mann isn't optimistic about the future." Maybe Mann took a peek at his morning paper.

Addendum:

Remove Intoxicated Drivers (RID) began working on the problem of AOD (alcohol overdose) in 1992. Based on discussions with victims' families and county medical examiners, RID estimates as many as 4,000 deaths occur each year in the United States from alcohol overdosing: drinking too much alcohol too fast. Families learn, in the most difficult way, that alcohol can be a lethal drug.

Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to AOD.



Teens pictured on the site died from alcohol poisoning.




Another site for stats on alcohol and youth people is MADD.