Sticky Side Eventually Dries Up
Here’s a couple of useless words: conservative and liberal. I’m about done with them. Their value is next to nil. Too big, too inaccurate. Too easy.
Still, we hear them all the time, accepting them as precise from the radio or the television or the printed page.
They are worthless labels.
Unless they are all you have. My mission is always to have more.
We have run them into the ground. They have little meaning except perhaps to pigeonhole somebody when we take a cerebral nap, when our brains cramp from inactivity.
Conservative and liberal have been Reasonerized. Harry Reasoner once said he hated labels because they tend to lump you with people with whom you have only one thing in common.
And in a world where a bunch of self-proclaimed conservatives are running up deficits and out-loud and proud liberals voted for welfare reform, well, who you gonna call?
The answer to “Who the hell is Harry Reasoner?” in a minute. The guy had a point, though.
In a world where information reproduces like bunnies on steroids and cheap Chardonnay, we often depend on labels rather than thought — let alone research, facts or even simply looking it up. We’re label makers. We lump. We’ve traded thinking for Post-it notes. Just stick it on, and you’re good to go.
We find it easier to explain away a behavior or a thought or a statement with something like “so much conservative nonsense” or “just another flaming liberal” than to have the chops to discuss or debate or rebut.
Or find out.
My high school English teacher pounded me incessantly about lazy thinking, about assuming and shorthand and missing the point badly. He was talking, among other things, about labeling.
My mom said it was simply name-calling.
Harry Reasoner was an anchorman for CBS, when CBS reported the news, unlike in the Rather era, when it too often was the news.
Of course, if you want to slap a label on Harry — or anybody else — go ahead.
Problem is, eventually, the sticky side dries up.