George Orwell had it right

Rammer Jammer said:
Proles are attracted to sensational stories.

I have sympathy but don't really care about stories like heart attack football man, the 4 dead students in Idaho etc. These are individual tragedies that don't merit much attention. Yet people eat it up...
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That's the way I see it.

Witnessing a heart attack where someone comes close to dying is a traumatic event. For the people there. When other teams and the NFL started hyping it, I was turned off. They were exploiting it.
 
Having been born in Buffalo, I can sympathize with the sentiment of this thread. I too am sympathetic about a young man being so close to death. But my sympathies are much greater for the first responders that lost their lives in the recent blizzard, or the good people of the Ukraine that die every day.

An old friend was once lamenting that his wife was nag nag nagging for him to give her money so she could buy the needed new shoes for the kids. He told her she could have whatever was left over after he bought his season football tickets. THAT's where the priorities lie in Buffalo.

Since the accident, the first 5-10 minute lead story of every 6:00 news broadcast has summarized the daily health events.

Just before the accident Mr Hamlin set up a charity fund for a good cause and had set a goal of $25,000. By the end of the day of the accident it had reached 6 million. Last I read it was over 9 million. So, good things DO happen.

Since we started out talking about 1984, just look around. Looks like we're there now. We may have the ability to watch whatever we want, but that's about the only control we have...
 
A 24 year old athlete went into cardiac arrest and had minutes of CPR performed on him live in front of millions of viewers. It's very public, novel, and made a lot of fans confront some of the dangers inherent in the sport. Not hard to figure out why it got a lot of press.

We've got a lot of bad stuff happening in the world. Damar Hamlin gets press, soldiers, police, and firefighters who get hurt or killed don't get as much press. Fishermen, loggers, delivery drivers, construction workers, and all manner of people who have far more dangerous jobs than police officers get even less press. People dying of preventable illnesses through any number of reasons get even less. Hardly anyone cares about more than a handful of the 1.1 million or so COVID deaths in the US. For deaths/injuries if it doesn't happen to someone known to you (personally or through movies, TV, sports, whatever) or isn't particularly novel, it's not going to grab the attention of viewers. A free press focusing a lot of attention on a novel event that happened on live TV isn't exactly Orwellian, just attention being paid to something you're not a fan of.
 
My only regret is that I can only "Like" the OP once. I would like to comment further but, that means traveling down a road that I would probably get censored for!
 
Remember in "1984" Big Brother was watching YOU, Orwell wrote that the only real private space left was inside your skull and they were probably working on that.
 
'the dangers inherent in the sport'

I don't consider it a football injury. He had minimal contact with the opponent. I think it was a medical event while playing football.

He was damn lucky it happened while playing football. I.e., football saved his life.
 
Puller said:
George Orwell must have had a crystal ball back 72 years ago when he wrote 1984.

That football player that was recently hurt and had the cardiac arrest on the field (sorry, I don't recall his name) came to mind when I read this. We have service men and women and LEOs and firefighters who put their lives on the line every day and when one of them is injured in the line of duty seldom is more than a nod given to them outside their family. But a revered football player gets hurt while on TV and it's a national calamity, national news reports and social media frenzies and nation wide prayer vigils.

Personally, I found the whole focus on one overpaid football player to be an example of misplaced priorities in our nation.

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Please say a prayer in memory of U.S. Army Spc. Henry J. "Mitch" Mayfield Jr., who was killed in action Jan. 5, 2020, during an attack on Manda Bay Airfield, Kenya, by a terrorist organization.
 
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LVSteve said:
The lack of comment on the NFL wildcard weekend was noticeable on here.
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Well let's see.
LOVED the Jacksonville Chargers game! Although Jacksonville is gonna get their clock cleaned against the Chiefs.
SF-Seattle??? Who cares. Other than the fact that Dallas/TB is more likely to get beat by SF than Seattle
Dolphins Bills-loved it. great game. Will be fun to watch the Bills, the Bengals and the Chiefs fight tor the superbowl for the next few years-three GREAT quarterbacks.
NY-Vikings. NY is an exciting team and will be fun to watch against the Eagles-sad to see the Vikings loose-I want to see them win a Super Bowl before I die.
Bengals-Ravens. LOVE Joe Burrow-the guy is "Mr. Cool" Can only do so much without an offensive line though-will be tough in Buffalo.
Dallas-Tampa. I wanted it to end in a tie since both teams cannot loose the same game. Brady gone (or at least he needs to go ans salvage some self respect). Dallas-I hope SF cleans their clock.
Caje's picks for this weeken:
NY over the Eagles-something going good for NY right now and the Eagles were noticibly absent from the news this week.
SF will clean up Dallas this weekend and in an epic upset, NY beats SF to earn another "Super Bowl" (All property rights owned by the NFL who will mess you over badly for any unauthirozed uase thereto) championship
None of this means squat however since whoever comes in from the AFC is gonna will it anyway :D

OK with you LVSteve.....:p
 
waffles said:
A 24 year old athlete went into cardiac arrest and had minutes of CPR performed on him live in front of millions of viewers. It's very public, novel, and made a lot of fans confront some of the dangers inherent in the sport. Not hard to figure out why it got a lot of press.

We've got a lot of bad stuff happening in the world. Damar Hamlin gets press, soldiers, police, and firefighters who get hurt or killed don't get as much press. Fishermen, loggers, delivery drivers, construction workers, and all manner of people who have far more dangerous jobs than police officers get even less press. People dying of preventable illnesses through any number of reasons get even less. Hardly anyone cares about more than a handful of the 1.1 million or so COVID deaths in the US. For deaths/injuries if it doesn't happen to someone known to you (personally or through movies, TV, sports, whatever) or isn't particularly novel, it's not going to grab the attention of viewers. A free press focusing a lot of attention on a novel event that happened on live TV isn't exactly Orwellian, just attention being paid to something you're not a fan of.
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The interesting thing is that when Hamlin went into cardiac arrest, the paramedics saving his life were probably the ones being paid the least on that entire field. And they did their jobs promptly, professionally and in front of a stadium full of hyper-focused onlookers, dozens of medical staff from both teams, and a national TV audience. As they were performing CPR and transporting him safely to the hospital, all the focus was on how the players on the field were reacting to the situation.

We have a word for this in the Fire-Rescue and EMS community: "Tuesday"
 
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