The Boob's Tube

    Someone mentioned the Challenger Disaster and the events and decisions that led up to it.  Yep, it's still depressing and it still makes me mad.
    The Challenger missed its launch date by a few days because of what sure seemed like a comedy of errors.  One day a wrench that would be laying on a bench in most people's garage couldn't be found in all of Cape Kennedy.  The next day a power drill had to be retrieved from a guy's car in the parking lot because NASA didn't have one.  These things were kind of mirthfully reported on the evening news with a 'meh ', kinda shrug,. Whattaya gonna do?
    The third day was cold for Florida, too cold for the design limitations of the launch rockets and it looked like another scrub. They fatally decided to go.
    The engineers and techies who had traditionally administered NASA had been replaced by the Reagan people with political appointees better suited to projecting image. In an other word; fools.
    It has been reported that the Reagan Oval Office had 3 televisions running all the time to monitor news and projected image.  They thought it made them better informed and more responsive. In fact, it made them more poorly informed and reactionary rather than responsive.  When the blue glow they bathed themselves in began to sting with the comedy of errors at NASA they decided to act decisively.
    Launching a space shuttle is tantamount to hurling a small office building into space. You can see it from over a hundred miles away even in the daytime.  It's spectacular and unbelievably complicated. The engineers at NASA, to a man, rejected the idea of launching in the cold conditions that were outside design limitations.  They were overruled by the Reagan political appointees, seven innocent people were killed and the program was set-back for 3 years.  The design of the booster rockets was declared to be the culprit and they were redesigned.  Thank God that cosmetic redesign didn't turn out to be sabotage in and of itself.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Quietly, the political people were replaced with techies. That was a broken idea that was fixed.
    If the boobs in the Oval Office hadn't been watching television rather than doing their jobs that would not have happened.
    Well, that was long ago and far away.  Certainly, long ago but not as far away as we'd like.  Stupid people tend to repeat mistakes.  We still have the wrong boobs watching the wrong tube.
    Here are two really funny examples of the unintended consequence of essentially mindless television. The phenomenon of bungee jumping comes from a long-forgotten PBS documentary about a rite of passage practiced by some obscure tribe that Boomers were stuck watching on some rainy Sunday or Saturday afternoon. That's just strange. This second one is hilarious.  Most people think  diamonds can be created by subjecting a lump of coal to tremendous pressure.  That's just bullshit.  That's not how diamonds are formed at all but people believe that because we saw Superman do it by squeezing a lump of coal in his Super Hand. The persistence of that idiotic idea illustrates the problem.
    Donald Trump recently tried to hold a political rally in Tulsa.  It was a serious mistake and a serious humiliation founded in completely ridiculous assumptions.  Why?  How was a decision that bad reached?  Trying to spin the facts provided the answer.
    The Trump people said that something like 8 million people had watched the rally on television and online.  They want people to believe that was some sort of victory.  Trump saw a drop in the polls as a result of the failed rally.  He obviously knew it was bad news.  It led him to say that TV ratings were the real polls.  He touted the fact 5.1 million people had tuned into some sort of "town hall" he'd held with Sean Hannity on Fox News. It was pointed out 1.8 million had watched Chris Cuomo and 3.1 million had watched Rachel Maddow instead, at the same time. He saw that as a victory.  Why?
    There are 330 million Americans.  It's reasonable to expect over 130 million of us will vote in November. 10 million people watching a TV no matter the content, is a meaningless drop in a very large bucket.  The ratings of the various "news networks" are meaningless because they are so paltry.  There is nothing of value to be divined from watching the creators of this nonsense or following those who have bothered to view it.  They seem to move further and further from objective reality on a daily basis. None of these programs has ever contributed to a coherent decision nor should they be expected to. Our leaders should know that.  At the very least, it looks like we should stop paying the cable bill for the White House.  Again; a case of the wrong boobs watching the wrong tube.
    One undeniable fact of life is this:  Unless it's currently on fire or being shot into space, television is worthless as a source of information.  Our leaders should know that and you should too.