October 29, 2014 Article

Old Coot is a TV preacher.

By Merlin Lessler

I read an editorial in a New York City paper the other day. It was a huge rant about the dwindling number of readers in this country. It was loaded with statistics to back up the premise, concluding that TV, radio, cell phones, video games and the like were the cause. If it was true, why did they bother running it in the paper? Nobody would read it; we’re all watching TV or playing video games. It’s the old “preaching to the choir” syndrome. It runs rampant across our society.

Go to just about any church and you will get a lecture telling you our society is awash in sin; that nobody goes to church anymore. You look around and wonder who the preacher is talking about, certainly not these good people who come here every single week. They should get a big thank-you, not a lecture about the people that are absent.  

The Mensa Club holds meetings where they debate current topics and otherwise run through a series of exercises to improve their mental agility. They chuckle at how dense the rest of us are and wonder why we don’t get things the way they do. But, they won’t let us come to their meetings.  At least they never let me attend.

Politicians rail to their followers about the number of people who don’t care enough to vote. Their rants never make it to the non-voting public. And, it’s a good thing. I don’t think politicians could handle the non-voter’s explanation for not voting (they don’t vote because they are against everything that both candidates stand for). 

Store owners park in front of their shops to avoid walking a few blocks and then complain to their customers (and the media) that business is bad because, “There is no place to park in this darn town!” Teachers lecture kids at after-school activities about how the participation in school clubs and other school endeavors has fallen off. Parents complain to the same kids, who come home on time, about the tardiness of their siblings.

Preaching to the choir is something we can’t control. We all do it. We get irritated and let it out on innocent bystanders. Old coots know how to handle the impulse, not because we have more wisdom or self-control, but because our potential audience has gotten wise and knows how to elude us when we start to preach. 

It doesn’t matter. We don’t preach to the choir. We preach to the TV, to the radio, to the dog. When we hear something we don’t like on TV, we just yell back at it. Tom Brokaw and Barbara Walters didn’t retire because they’d been at it for decades and needed a respite. They retired because they got a psychic flash of what was happening on the other side of the TV screen. They saw the legion of old coots out there wagging their fingers and yelling at their TV sets when they didn’t like the information that was being reported. It scared them and they quit. At least that’s my take. And, I should know; I’m an ordained TV preacher.