It's 9AM

A Big Game of Who Said What

Chris Lowry

Jul 17, 2024

He tried to warn us.

I can’t remember which year it was, but I think I have the decade right.

Michael Jackson told us he was bad.

We just didn’t listen.

I didn’t watch the documentary that trashed his legacy.

Nor the news reports that came out on both sides.

Some said he was bad.

Others said he wasn’t bad, that the people who were saying he was bad just wanted money.

So we are left again with a “he said, she said,” type situation where we are supposed to measure who has the better lie and decide on our own.

An actress came out today to talk about how she was treated in Hollywood.

A starlet in the 90’s saying she was sexualized, which made her feel assaulted, and she is now ready to talk about it.

And it just so happens, she has a book coming out and would you please buy it to get the full story.

I was there in the 90’s.

Not on her set, but I can assure you, everybody was sexualized.

And when I turn on the radio today and hear a song about WAP, I’m pretty sure that’s sexualized.

What I’m waiting to see is the story a decade from now when the forgotten rap star comes out with a book saying the industry did it to her, not the song she wrote for herself.

It makes me wonder how much trouble we cause on our own, and then we start searching for others to blame.

Society is a good scapegoat. Fame is another, but that only affects about 1% of the population.

Maybe 2% if you expand it to social media fame.

How far can being naïve get you?

Especially if you know there are at least two and sometimes more sides to a story?

And none of them are the truth.

There is only what happened, and the various interpretations of what happened.

When I think about all the decisions we have to make in a day, I don’t want to spend any extra time and energy deciding which version is the closest to the truth.

Which is why I get mad at the news.

I’m a junkie, I know, and I do it to myself. Stop reading it!

It’s what I should do.

But I grew up in the time when newspapers were a daily staple.

I even got a little ink in my blood starting in sixth grade, writing for out little school paper that was mimeographed (yes!) in the office and passed out to kids in class.

That carried over all the way through high school where I was a Features Editor on our award winning weekly.

When I got to college, I was told journalism was tough and I didn’t make the cut because there were kids from every Podunk school paper trying for the same spot.

Coffee and the news go together like peas and carrots so I can’t help it if I want to read the headlines.

Maybe its part of searching for the truth every day, trying to ignore the bias and figure out what’s going on.

Putting the pieces together so I can figure out where to go, what to do next.

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