Plane Crashes, Speculation at 11!

An EgyptAir flight (MS804) disappeared from radar recently and has been presumed to have crashed. This announcement set off a flurry of speculation as to whether is was mechanical failure or terrorism or a communications failure or some other cause of the purported crash. This was before a crash had been confirmed! Not only were the typical news outlets speculating as to why the plane crashed but so were our political candidates. (Yo, candidates, let the others speculate. The odds they are wrong are very high and then you can nail them for irresponsibility. Trust me, it works. True leaders recommend calmness, not running around like chickens with their heads cut off.)

We have seemingly fallen into a speculative trap. The 24-hour news cycle leaves many hours of time needed to be filled on various news and discussion channels and web sites and therefore we fill them with … uniformed comment, most of which is pure speculation, based upon nothing but the speculator’s imagination.

In sports programming, every game seemingly has to be preceded by predictions on the parts of the sport’s talking heads as to who will win the contest. Some sports even keep score as to how good of a predictor each sportscaster is. Who cares? It does not affect how the game will come out once played and nobody remembers who predicted what afterward (unless they are reminded ad nauseum).

I have a novel idea … let’s wait until there is some real information. (I don’t want to use the word “facts” and put off the Republicans who believe they are a liberal conspiracy.)

Soon enough the air crash will be confirmed or not. Soon enough the debris will be examined and a cause found or not.

In our current passion for “Breaking News! *** Breaking News!” we end up with coverage that supplies 90% speculation 9% noise and 1% fact. Casual listeners will only recall the speculation. And there are already enough people believing lies (Obama was born in Kenya! Obama is a socialist! Atheists eat babies!), we don’t need more people believing uniformed speculations are facts.

Just wait, people. All things come to those who wait.

Addendum Yes, this is an aspect of Class Warfare. remember the Roman strategy of “bread and circuses?” This is the circuses.