Thank goodness for those panel-discussion-debates bestowed upon us regularly — OK, constantly — on television.
Scholarly snobs might view them as a busy vacuity hollow to the core, perhaps, but what do they know?
The dialogue can be high comedy well worth watching.
And if you don’t really care that Tom Hanks likes to mix Diet Coke and champagne — or wonder why anyone would do such a thing — it’s the chitchat that counts.
The latest climate alarm is always a beloved topic, and we do need to pay attention, but in these debates the fun is in the cliched summing-up.
These folks talk in stepping stones and you have to follow them carefully. But a little patience will reward you with hearing an old platitude you may not have heard in years.
The panelists help us sort out complicated issues and point us in the right direction on the cosmos, the whole of creation and stuff like that.
Or maybe offer an opinion that some fashion designer sent a starlet to an awards show in a ghastly outfit.
It’s the point they make in their summing-up, the in-a-nutshell argument on each topic, that makes the show worth watching.
The bottom line, the last word comment in a typical conversation might go like this, switching from one panelist to another:
“We don’t know what we don’t know.”
“Yeah, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
‘There’s been a lot of back-and-forth on this, you know.”
“Sure, but you can’t sweep that under the rug.”
“Maybe, but the proof is in the pudding.”
“So what? It is what it is.”
“Aw, c’mon, that’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Absolutely — and you can take that to the bank.”
“And yet, who knows what tomorrow might bring?”
“In the final analysis, you know what? We must use this as a learning experience.”
“We just need to be there …. in case.”
“Anything else would be counter-productive, surely.”
“OK, so let’s just leave it there.”
A highly regarded high school back east withheld academic merit awards “in the name of equity,” and parents were understandably outraged.
One school has been accused of keeping the news that students had qualified for a National Merit Award to keep from hurting the feelings of those who hadn’t.
All of which makes you wonder what would happen if high school athletic achievement, by some means, could be withheld from recruiters and big name college coaches, in the name of equity or anything else.
Good thing we have our priorities straight.
Corky Simpson is a veteran journalist who writes a column for the Green Valley News.
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