Published on: Thursday, May 27, 2010

By Brian J. Karem

I have nothing to say.

I’m a spent shell, sucked dry by life in the county and I give up. That’s it. I’m done. Stick a fork in me, roll me over, wrap me in tinfoil and call me a baked potato.

I’m sincerely angry at all the mullet-headed morons who pretend to care about other people, but care for no one but themselves.

Whether you’re on a church council and don’t understand why you should support youth athletic programs, or you’re the old fuddy-duddy dweeb of a next door neighbor who doesn’t like barking dogs, or you’re that imbecile who designed the traffic intersection on I-270 and Shady Grove road, I’m through with you.

I simply cannot stand the level of lunacy around here. I’m ready to scream.

Sorry, I merely had to vent for a second. Ah, yes. I feel better now.

I did find some sanity today though and I found it in the Rockville police department.

The Chief of Police asked me to talk about media relations with his officers, and I did my best in about 30 minutes to relate to them the fact that I’m no big fan of how reporters act either.

We are arrogant, ignorant and militantly opposed to any outside control – though we’ll happily cave to pressure inside our own organization.

We pretend we are all-knowing, all-seeing, and then you have a network news reader who gives a commencement address and while heaping accolades on the best and brightest graduates of that fine university – mistakenly names the best and brightest who graduated from a different university.

Getting your facts straight is all you have in this world as a reporter, and if you can’t do it when you’re standing up in front of a bunch of graduates as you usher them into the real world, well really, what good are you?

Not much at all.  It is a very telling moment that will be swept under the rug as we continue to listen to the gospel according to the cute on the television networks.

But that audience is quickly diminishing. I-pads, twitters and a variety of new applications, new ways to get information and new ways to enjoy it are destroying forever how the media deal with the world and how we present news.

It’s a great thing and I wholeheartedly embrace it. Meanwhile, on the local front we still have police officers trying to do their job, county council members who want accurate portrayals of what they’ve done, and local people begging to be heard through the iconic news filter that still adheres to the old way of doing business.

In the end, the old ways must die.

As we go forth trying to serve our audience and present the news, we best take the advice I gave to the Rockville police department; We need to be invested in our communities. We need to report on local events as if they were as important as national events, because they are.

More intense local reporting might change the way we deal with the morons with whom I have issues. Certainly if we can put pressure on the traffic designers, maybe we can influence them before they design some stupid interchange that adds to traffic problems by making motorists turn left at a stop light to merge right.

Maybe we could change county laws so the fuddy-duddies can’t rule. Maybe we can shed light on our troubled youth in such a way that inspires rather than destroys our desire to help and in the process inspires them.

At the end of the day my greatest frustration remains in my own behavior. For I fear I haven’t made my point nor communicated correctly my aims and ambitions.

I know my cause is just, I’m just not sure I’m making you aware of it.

That’s how I left the Rockville police after speaking with them.

I hope I?made my point, didn’t seem too pompous in the process, nor full of myself.

I sincerely hope that we all learn to work together.

The politicians down town, the police and the press, the preachers and their flocks, family members, friends and neighbors.

I’m telling you it’s just too nuts otherwise.

And I don’t look good as a baked potato.