It is that time of the year again, back to school. I see one big change this year. Usually, the local TV stations are doing feel-good reports about little ones heading off to kindergarten or the first grade. The anticipation, excitement, and sometimes trauma for the kids and the parents. Maybe a story about a brand new school. Some high school football stories are usually sprinkled in. They encourage folks to send their first-day photos to the TV website or social media accounts.
Well, apparently those happy celebrations are so 2017. This year almost all I'm seeing and reading about is school safety. What new safety equipment and procedures has your school district put in place? How much safety stuff has been purchased and at what cost? What training have the teachers and staff received?
There have been stories about school safety seminars and conventions. The school safety business has become a $2.5 billion industry almost overnight. Metal detectors, locks, alarms, bulletproof desks, whiteboards, glass, and a hundred other items. There are also notification apps and equipment. Of course, there is no shortage of "experts" who will be happy to come to your school to provide a safety assessment and/or conduct training sessions.
The "experts" that I've seen interviewed are deadly serious and make it sound as if every school will be invaded by a crazed gunman within the next few days. But, if the school district follows their advice and purchases their prevention equipment, all will be safe.
I know the local news outlets love a sensational story that they can hype. I wonder what effect all this dire and sensational reporting about school safety will have on the kids and parents.
Wednesday, 8/15/18, was the first day of the school year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It is the site of last year's horrific school shooting where 17 students and staff were killed. That dominated the news. There were stories about the trauma the survivors have endured, the new security measures, the increase in armed security personnel, and ongoing counseling. More stuff to scare the kids.
Still, not one photo of little kids on the first day of classes.
I know, news is news and it is mostly about bad stuff. I understand that the return of Stoneman Douglas students is newsworthy. A few stories about new safety procedures and measures are warranted. Students and parents need to know what backpacks are acceptable, what any new dropoff and pickup procedures have been implemented, that student IDs are required to be displayed at all times, etc. What we don't need are the furrowed brows and dire tones of the reporters, anchors, school officials, and security personnel. It is up to adults to protect our children, not scare the hell out of them.
I wonder, with all the emphasis on school safety, the active shooter drills, the classes and seminars on the dangers, and the graphic news stories, what will be the results? Will kids be afraid to go to school, will they be nervous and scared all day every day, will grades suffer, will we have a generation of kids with PTSD?
As usual, we go overboard after a tragedy. We did it after 9-11 and now we are doing it because of school shootings. As usual, the con artists come out of the woodwork to take advantage. The government officials cave to public pressure and pass laws and spend money on perceived solutions. Many of these so-called solutions have no history of actually working. There are no federal guidelines for what constitutes school safety. None of the new products like locks, cameras, bulletproof items, fencing or building design have any kind of certification. Whoever has the best salesmen and marketing gets the contract.
Let's tap the breaks, quit scaring the students, staff, and parents. Do some real studies about how schools work and how to stop invaders or malicious students.
Summer is over. Let's have a fun, productive and safe 2018-2019 school year.
wjh
I've touched on this subject before but the trend just keeps getting more ridiculous. That is the recycling of our famous brands. Apparently, the creative and marketing folks can's come up with new concepts. They now just slightly modify a well-known name or brand. Almost every trip to the grocery store, there is a new version or flavor of an old time product.
TV and the movies are notorious for doing sequels, spinoffs, and revivals. This coming TV series, we have a new version of Magnum PI. Based on the previews I've seen, it looks like only the Hawiaan location and red Ferrari remain from the original. CBS already has the reboot of Hawaii Five-O. That same network also has the Young Sheldon spinoff of The Big Bang Theory. There are three versions of the NCIS franchise. There used to be several versions of Law and Order and CSI. This is not new, we have had numerous versions of Star Trek for the last 50 years. In the Movies, we have the Star Wars franchise and several other superhero sequels. The Ocean's series has used numbers between 8 and 13 to designate the films. How about The Fast and the Furious movies How many have there been? And all with the same script, just different cars and locales.
It is not just the entertainment industry. Food is a particularly derivative industry. There used to be one flavor of Cheerios, Oreos, Triscuits, Corn Flakes, 3 Musketeers, etc. Buying Triscuits, Wheat Thins or even Cheese-Itz is now a major decision point. They all have multiple flavors, sizes, and textures. Sea Salt, low sodium, gluten-free, no GMO, organic, and a thousand other descriptive adjectives. Some real, many complete marketing BS. Candy is and has always been gluten-free, but now it is trendy to put that on the label. Remember when yogurt was a small section in the dairy aisle? Now it takes up more room than milk. Is it really fair to call two vanilla cookies with a chocolate filling an Oreo? According to Nabisco, now almost every sandwich type cookie is an Oreo. There are dozens of flavors and combinations. While spinoffs and variations have always been around, the changes have come far more quickly of late. Oreos were mostly only available in the original flavor from 1912 until the 1970s when different shapes and sizes emerged. New flavors finally came about after 2000.
Sometimes the new flavor or shape has absolutely no relationship to the original. It's the same for TV and movies. The current Mission: Impossible movie franchise has very little to do with the original TV series. The original was about a tight team of professionals who worked together to outsmart the adversary. Little or no violence or gunplay was necessary. Tom Cruise is a lone wolf who displays superhuman abilities and has an impressive arsenal of weapons. A low-key, brainy TV original vs an over the top bombastic movie series reboot. I'll take Peter Graves over Tom Cruise.
There is at least one more disturbing area of this recycling trend. That is the reviving of a once iconic brand name for a new, usually crappy, product. I have seen late night infomercials that tout the Bell & Howell or Polaroid name. It's usually for some $19.99 plus shipping and handling, we'll double it for the next 10 minutes, product. Buyer beware.
I know this trend will continue and probably accelerate. In fact, I may recycle this bitch in the future.
wjh
- Pro teams now have a special uniform for every holiday or cause. Sell more stuff.
- Not sure if I have defective technology or I don't speak clearly. I told my Google Home to set a reminder to do laundry. At the appointed time it said I'm hungry.
- It is often not so much what we did that we regret but rather what we didn't do.
- If you only watch one TV news network, be it Fox News or MSNBC, you are not really informed.
- When someone says "this is not who we are" what they really mean is "this is not who we want to be". We already proved who we are.
- Are any legitimate products or services advertised on TV at 2:00 AM or later?
- Saw an old episode of The Fugitive. Made me wonder, was he the unluckiest guy ever for almost getting caught every week or the luckiest for escaping?
- If politicians and lawyers wrote software, none of our technology would work reliably.
- Seems almost every retailer now has a Christmas in July promotion.
- When it comes to marketing slogans, UNLIMITED rarely actually means unlimited. See unlimited phone plans to prove this point.
- It's amazing to me how many people apparently don't have access to Google and 60 seconds to spare to check on outrageous crap on social media.
- Don't you hate it when the artistic designers get so cute with graphics and fancy script that you can't actually read it?
- Local TV news continues to shrink the sports segment and expand the weather segment. How long does it take to tell us it is going to be hot or rainy or cold tomorrow?
- We now have 4K HDR 70" TVs with Dolby surround sound speakers yet we watch movies and TV on a 5" phone with a crappy speaker.
- Seems every news anchor and reporter was in Helsinki for a one day, closed door, one on one meeting between Trump and Putin. For what purpose?
- Are The Rolling Stones the most dehydrated/drawn looking band ever?
- When I was growing up no adults had first names except for aunts and uncles. Everyone was Mr., Mrs., or Miss.
- Wouldn't it be nice if all TV stations were approximately the same volume?
- It occurs to me that the Mission: Impossible movies are the exact opposite of the Mission: Impossible original TV show. The TV show had very little violence, they outsmarted their adversaries. The movies are all action and violence and carnage.
- Where do they find those idiots on infomercials? They can't slice, dice, grate, paint, nail, etc.
- We have tea bags, how come there aren't coffee bags?
- In many TV commercials for drugs, the announcer or disclaimers say "Do not take super drug if you are allergic to it. First, how would you know you are allergic? Second, if you do know, why would you take it?
- In government, the personnel director's title is "chief component human capital officer". Seems a little too overblown and confusing.
wjh
