Today’s word is “oversaturation” — the result of excessively flooding the market, the airwaves, social media, conversation, and anything else, with, for lack of better words, all sorts of stuff.
If Mr. McGuire were to pull Benjamin Braddock aside today, as opposed to when he did it back in 1967’s “The Graduate,” the word wouldn’t be “plastics,” it would be “oversaturation.” McGuire might have thought there was a great future in plastics 50 years ago, but the present, and future, is in oversaturation. Already I’ve used the word three times. You could say I’ve oversaturated this column with it.
But can you blame me? Everywhere you look, we’re inundated with information on things that, 50 years ago, we really didn’t need to know — and that I suggest we still don’t need to know.
Let’s start with something easy. It might snow a little. It might get cold. There may be ice on the ground. It’s February, though, so nothing about any of the above is unusual.
Come the summer, we may get a thunderstorm, which happens when hot- and cold-air masses collide (cold, in July, is probably a relative term). Again, it being summer, a thunderstorm — even one with wind gusts — is not unusual. I certainly didn’t think “tornado” every time we got one when I was a kid, but now we’re more or less forced to because of draconian weather forecasts.
We had some snow last week. Nothing serious — at least not around here. It accumulated maybe 2 or 3 inches. Prior to 1978 this would have been reduced to the weather segment on the evening news, and Harvey Leonard, or whomever, would get about two minutes to explain it.
But after the Blizzard of ’78 that all changed. Now, if there’s even a whiff of snow in the air, it’s the lead story on the evening news, and there are reporters, who speak in ominous tones, from Storm Center (pick your station) placed strategically all over the region, breathlessly reporting on the snow event.
We used to laugh at Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel standing in the middle of the blizzard or the hurricane, hanging on desperately to a light pole to keep from getting toppled over by the wind. Now, we see reports from the news station’s parking lot watching cars riding along Route 128 during a snow flurry. And please, stop interrupting “Jeopardy” to tell us it’s snowing. Enough already. Oversaturation.
Bob Dylan once wrote — albeit in a different context — “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Here’s another example: everywhere you look today, we are inundated with “outrage.” It wouldn’t be “Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me” today. It would be “Everybody’s ‘Outraged’ At Me.” Same meter, even.
Oversaturation of wedge issues tend to widen divisions between people wider, and as a result, we get “outraged” before all the facts are in. Nick Sandmann is the perfect case in point. He’s the 16-year-old kid from Covington, Ky., who was photographed with a MAGA hat on, with what looked to be a kind of smarmy smirk as a Native American was chanting a few inches away from him. It had all the ingredients of a perfect anti-Trump trope: dumb, smug kid with the hat, mocking a Native American elder — and a veteran to boot.
But there is just no room for ambiguity today. There was more nuance to this issue, and it’s quite likely that everyone involved — and not just the kid — bore some responsibility for a situation that just careened out of control. And that’s especially true with the news media, where the kid was tried and convicted. And, of course, we all worked ourselves into an “outrage” before anyone had sufficiently delved into the incident — before we even knew if we should have been “outraged,” or where to even direct it.
And, almost as if on cue, the kid’s family is suing the Washington Post and asking for a cool $250 million.
This isn’t just oversaturation of “outrage,” but of the people who goad us into such anger.
It’s only February of 2019. The first presidential primary is a year away. Yet the number of Democrats who have already announced is exhaustive. I can’t even name them all without looking them up.
And it’s not just candidates. We are oversaturated with spin-doctors and pundits who pick these people apart until there’s nothing left. The Elizabeth Warren/Native American issue began because Scott “Centerfold” Brown had nothing else left to hit her with during the 2012 senatorial campaign.
It’s tough to identify the issues that end up having legs, but once it’s proven you can get some mileage out of one, look out. The Warren issue is a perfect example.
These issues take on lives of their own. Smart people say and do dumb things in efforts to diffuse them, but they’re indestructible — like some mutant virus that invades your body.
I’m not sure there’s a solution to this. It’s so pervasive that we, as a people, need massive doses of antibiotics, or chemotherapy, or something to eradicate it. Maybe, just maybe, we could all do a better job exercising some restraint in how we react to things. It couldn’t hurt.