The Emerald Rose

      As I grew up my first “brush” with politics was when I went with a friend named Eddie Mathews when he had to deliver the afternoon, or actually evening, newspapers. That was back when we depended on the newspaper for information on eveything happening in the world. It was long before the “nightly” News Programs Local station and then Huntley Brinkly or Walter Cronkite on the National level, then on ito the nightly programing, i.e. Happy Days, Father knows best, Milton Berle, etc. That is where our news came from at the time.

       The man of the house would come home, mix a cocktail or grab a cold beer and sit down to watch that new fangled TV and catch the news from a person he had built a bond with through the “tube”, all the while reading the evening paper and adjusting the “cheaters” (reading glasses) Supper was always served before, OR after, but never during, for man always needed to stay informed and up to date.

         Now in the last fifteen or twenty years an atomic bomb of news, news vehicles, methodology, and delivery have multiplied like a room full of horny rabbits! Ted Turner was right when he made the assumption that CNN would be a success, he expanded news and “breaking stories” to the world. The first Gulf  War was the very first war “Broadcast live”. Viet Nam was in the old network days when footage was sent to the networks and they cut and pasted and wrote a script for the “wizened” news anchors to read as we watched the film. But the Internet made everything even more quickly available to us, and more folks jumped on the band wagon. Fox TV, and upstart cable operation started thier own news arm, General Electric bought NBC and installed a totally seperate and independant network catering to the stock market and it’s trials and tribulations. “Talking heads ” began appearing everywhere, 24/7.

         Growing up in Boston we had three distinct Newspapers, dailys. There was the prestigious Boston Globe, it’s market was the upscale businessman who was somewhat familiar with what was going on, locally as well as globally. The second largest paper was a two fold paper, The Boston Herald in the morning, and The Evening Traveler at night, (yes, newspapers used to have a morning AND an evening edition). The Herald/Traveler was sort of a “home” paper in that it was not overly “deep” was a more “popularist ” paper and one that Mom could read as well. The third paper was the Boston Record American, the only “tabloid” style paper. It was a blue collar paper all the way, headlines were big, bold and sensational, “Mayor caught in love triangle” ot the like, and always with a picture that took up the other half of the front page of the paper. It’s claim to success lay in it’s layout. If you read it front to back you got the news. Every sordid detail,…but very little politics, that was buried back around page 26 or so. Now if you read the paper back to front, ….well it started with the latest hottest, most up to date sports news, (including the local team (Boston Res Sox, Celtics, Bruins, or Patriots) and all the box scores, and ranged on down to the horse racing results at several favorite tracks that one could “drop by” the corner deli, slip them a dollar or two, and place a bet. (It was also the “secret” place where the daily number showed up in the racing results in a particular race that was featured.) Up unitl the mis 1970’s my mother in law still would either go herself or send one of the kids with a quarter and a note to place her “bet” on the number. (While a really racist thing to say now it used to be called the “nigger pool” becasue of the twenty-five cent cost and it’s overwhelming popularity in the inner city housing projects) It was everyone’s “ticket out”,…and some actually made it.

       Well the papers were politcally slanted either democrat or republican. The editorials all ran that way, the reporting was all that way, but you knew which you were and that was “your” paper of choice.

       But what of today stay tuned tomorrow and see where we’ve gone with this “instant madness”.

       Unbtil then, “Good night Chet,”,,,”Goodnight David” or for the rest of you , “and that’s the way it was,…I’m Walter Cronkite, and good night.

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