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Jewish World Review
June 28, 2011
/ 26 Sivan, 5771
Where's the app for common sense?
By
Michael Smerconish
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Friends don't let jackasses drink and drive."
In sharing that tweet with a touch of the send key, film critic Roger Ebert joined the likes of Anthony Weiner and the 18-year-old from Radnor High School as the latest examples of the lack of online impulse control.
Ebert was tweeting in reaction to the death of "Jackass" star Ryan Dunn, 34, in a one-car accident in Chester County, Pa., early last Monday. Whether his assessment was correct is beside the point. The timing — not even 24 hours after the deaths of Dunn and his passenger, 30-year-old Afghanistan war vet Zachary Hartwell — was "unseemly," as Ebert himself later acknowledged on his blog.
(The online reverberations in reaction to Ebert's tweet didn't exactly vindicate the social-media world, either. Ebert's Facebook page was flooded with vitriolic comments — and temporarily shut down as a result. Dunn's friend and "Jackass" co-star Brandon "Bam" Margera tweeted viciously and profanely in reply to the tweet, at one point telling Ebert, whose jaw cancer has left him largely unable to speak, to "shut your fat ... mouth.")
Former Rep. Weiner exercised similarly poor judgment in sexting with his Twitter followers. So did the Radnor High School senior who was charged last week with making terroristic threats in a video e-mailed to a school administrator. The video contains the words: "Cold metal in my hands / I am at school / I'll shoot you down / You stupid fool."
Just how far has technology upset our sensibilities? In Indiana, a 21-year-old Amish man named Willard Yoder was just arrested after allegedly sending 600 texts to a 12-year-old girl he wished to bed ... in a horse-drawn buggy. Thankfully, the girl notified her mother before he got his wish.
So affixed to our bodies is the technology needed to tweet or post on Facebook that there is no longer a commonsense filter to save us from ourselves. It's as if social media have made mind-reading a reality. Gone is the deliberation that once was necessary to speak cogently, pen one's thoughts, or even dial a phone. In those instances, some level of forethought was necessary, affording the opportunity to catch oneself before committing bad behavior. Thoughts were just inner-held beliefs. No more.
Now whatever is on the brain is almost immediately out for public consumption, etched in the metaphysical granite of cyberspace.
Forget the carnival soothsayer who will read your palm and reveal that you're in a love triangle. Today, ESP begins with www. Suddenly, we're all wearing X-ray-vision glasses.
Remember that plastic eyewear once sold in the back of boy magazines? They were often advertised next to the $5 kit that would explain how to change your banana-seat bicycle into a minibike. Those glasses carried the promise of allowing you X-ray vision. The fact that my parents told me they'd never work didn't stop me from trying. The prospect of seeing into people, reading their minds, has always had an allure. And now social media make it a reality because our iPhone appendages are at odds with common sense.
Thank goodness that the most advanced technology when I was coming of age was the Xerox machine at the company Christmas party.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Previously:
06/02/11 Over-scrutinizing lives costs us potential leaders
04/19/11 Taking a chance to say, Hi
04/06/11 Race policies should be altered to reflect new demographic reality
11/10/10 Delaware's independent, but short-lived, voice
11/03/10 Papers should leave endorsing to others
10/21/10 Media help to hype perception of bullying
09/23/10 Officer down, killer hyped up
08/04/10 Documents highlight Pakistan's shortcomings as a U.S. ally
07/06/10 On taking back Sept. 11
06/29/10 Name elite corps to develop energy independence?
04/21/10 New account reinforces a serviceman's valor
03/11/10 Medical profession must police itself better
02/18/10 One-trick athletes
02/09/10 Active, retired law officers should be able to carry guns on planes to help stop terrorists
02/04/10 How to bring tech up to speed
01/28/10 Campaign donations must be fully and immediately disclosed online
01/07/10 The flying emperor still has no clothes, and no one is willing to say so
12/24/09 A law to mandate college football playoffs?
12/17/09 Cheney's abuse of freedom of speech
11/26/09 The true cost of freedom from anxiety
10/27/09 If GOP wants to win in 2012, it must reshape its primary process
10/08/09 It's time to get smarter on extended school day
09/03/09 What a summer of eulogizing flawed public figures reveals about society
08/12/09 It's time for cyclists and motorists to reconcile
08/05/09 Faces have changed, but vitriol remains
06/25/09 Fair comment or foul? Warm up the Muzzle Meter
06/08/09 Believability is key in crime-hoax villains
05/14/09 Did Hollywood inspire the meltdown men?
04/20/09 Let's give killers their due: Anonymity
03/12/09 Uninsured who can't afford medical care lose a lot more
02/06/09 My debate with Musharraf on hunt for bin Laden
01/29/09 Torture must remain an option
01/15/09 Making a case for suing Madoff
12/22/08 A difficult but rational chat about plans
12/17/08 Facebook epidemic: More than 120 million have joined, many too old for this nonsense
12/01/08 The high price of downsizing the news biz
11/14/08 Prescience on greed, arrogance of a system
09/29/08 Closer look at party lines
08/26/08 Obama's pick creates GOP opportunity
08/21/08 Fishing with the Angry Everyman
07/31/08 The perils of e-mail: Ponder, then click
05/22/08 Two very different sides of the Internet
02/12/08 Sublimely ridiculous suits
11/28/08 Cell phones cut out secondary circle of kinship
09/26/07 What do we owe those who have died in Iraq?
08/30/07 A Navy SEAL's gut-wrenching tale of survival
07/30/07 First it was a faux pas, now it's a new word
© 2008, The Philadelphia Inquirer Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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