{"id":21424,"date":"2018-08-22T19:25:43","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T23:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21424"},"modified":"2018-08-22T19:25:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T23:25:43","slug":"brocks-banter-grand-slams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-grand-slams\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Grand Slams"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the risk of sounding like one of those typical, \u201cget off my lawn\u201d-type people who think that everything was rosier in their formative years in comparison to today\u2019s supposed slippery slope into rack and ruin, I sometimes worry about this up and coming generation.
\nThere, I said it.
\nIt\u2019s not so much that I think my childhood heyday of the late 80s and the 1990s was anything special or out of the ordinary to reminisce over. Certainly not. I haven\u2019t fully jumped on board, for instance, with the current nostalgia bandwagon that has seen such television shows like Will & Grace, Full House, and the ill-fated Roseanne revived for a new generation. (Although, in the interests of full disclosure, I am more than just a little bit excited for the Murphy Brown reboot, as I think it will be particularly relevant in today\u2019s political climate).
\nNor am I inclined to revisit my ill-advised days of sporting a rat tail, or of moving through the halls of my office wearing Hypercolor everything, as I did through elementary school, thinking I was too cool for\u2026.well, school.
\nIt\u2019s the simpler pleasures today\u2019s generation is missing. Think of the unique and singular sensation of slamming down the phone receiver back onto its cradle. If you still have a land line in your house, they might still have a chance. But, if your phone is one of those newfangled portable devices, we\u2019ve got a problem.
\nIn my experience, the strength in which one used to slam the receiver back down on its cradle was in direct correlation to whatever nonsense you heard coming out of the business end of things.
\nIf you were listening for a few minutes to a telemarketer telling you that \u201cyou may have already won,\u201d a rather half-hearted slam might follow. If it was a family squabble, a couples\u2019 quarrel, or something that could actually impact your life in a tangible way, chances are the slam might be firmer and more decisive.
\nAnd, if you slammed the phone down hard enough, you could hear the bells tinkle ever so slightly from inside the works. Depending on the conversation you just had, sometimes those faint peals were a balm for the soul.
\nSometimes slamming it down wasn\u2019t enough. If you really wanted a breather from someone, you could simply place the receiver down beside the phone for as long as you wished, and peace would reign until you got over it and put the receiver back where it belongs.
\nThe beauty of the system was that it was impermanent and carried with it minimal damage.
\nBy the time you cooled off, you could replace the receiver, thus opening back up the conduits of communication.
\nNowadays, all this can be done with the wave of a finger, whether you\u2019re lightly touching the End Call button on your phone, or doing away with a conversation \u2013 or potential conversations \u2013 on social media platforms like Facebook with a simple click or tap.
\nFrom standing on what some might consider just a little bit in from the sidelines, this appears to be happening with increasing \u2013 and alarming \u2013 frequency.
\nThe maddening part of it is that it can be done so swiftly, barely allowing any time for any party involved in a verbal disagreement to pinpoint exactly where things went off the proverbial rails.
\nYou can\u2019t figure out exactly what you said that set someone off, thus leaving room for all around ignorance and, perhaps worse, not being able to take some pride in yourself for sticking to your guns on an issue \u2013 whatever the issue happens to be.
\nIn our fraught political climate \u2013 and, in this case, I am not just talking about endless debates on the whys and wherefores of what is going down in our neighbours to the south; we have, after all, just put a provincial election to bed, a municipal election is just warming up, and there is speculation of a snap Federal election this fall \u2013 these situations are becoming a regular part of day to day life.
\nPersonally, I don\u2019t see the value of it.
\nPeople have come up to me complaining about being blocked by one person or another, that their views are not being allowed to stand in the social media forum of their choice, that splinter groups have been formed because they were either blocked by a politically-minded administrator or disagreed with the direction he or she was taking a group.
\nIn very few of these cases do I ever get an indication that there has been dialogue between the parties in question on just why things have shaken down the way they have.
\nBut, the beat goes on.
\nI\u2019m not immune to this. Over the course of my time on social media \u2013 and, admittedly, I was a holdout for quite some time \u2013 I think, and I could be wrong, that I have only been blocked by four people on social media. In two of the four cases, the reason for blocking were clear, if not unlikely \u2013 in the first case, I disagreed with someone over a news story about Faye Dunaway and, in the second, I questioned the sincerity of Roseanne Barr\u2019s tearful apology after her most recent show was cancelled following a string of racist tweets.
\nThe other two cases, I have no idea. Both were political aspirants who gave me no indication of any kind of disagreement. Thus, all of us were deprived of a learning opportunity.
\nI\u2019ve always been perplexed by people who use social media in the mistaken belief that it is an echo chamber, hoping that whatever they put out there will be greeted with nothing short of universal agreement.
\nPutting something into the public domain in any way is an invitation for dialogue and this, in my view, is always a positive. You might disagree, but ongoing conversation can often foster a new perspective. Of course, swaying someone by the sheer persuasiveness of your argument is becoming an equally rare animal these days, but it never hurts to try.
\nWhat hurts is shutting these ideas out and dismissing any chance of an intellectual or philosophical dialogue. Have we, as a people, reached a turning point where that is no longer desired or even possible? I hope not. As the municipal election heats up and the gears begin grinding on whatever is on the Federal horizon, this is only going to become more problematic with each passing week.
\nIf only opening up the lines of communication was still as simple as putting the phone back on the hook.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir At the risk of sounding like one of those typical, \u201cget off my lawn\u201d-type people who think that everything was rosier in their formative years in comparison to today\u2019s supposed slippery slope into rack and ruin, I sometimes worry about this up and coming generation. There, I said it. It\u2019s not so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5zy","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 12:55:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}