Ripped from the headlines!

“Ripped from the headlines!”  One of my favorite phrases during a TV commercial about a “new show or episode.”  I love the phrase, mainly because it means that all you will see, hear, or experience from that show, or episode, will be bunk or hogwash.  Much like a warning on a pack of cigarettes, it tells me to find something else to watch, since what is to follow will resemble “truth” the same way a blue whale resembles a fruit fly.  I recognize that this is as much the old soldier as the lawyer speaking here, but I’ve watched enough of these things to know that any resemblance to the facts is purely coincidental.  I recall, while still on active duty, being interviewed about an event by a member of the press.  After taking things out of context, and then folding in something to make it more “exciting”, the story was printed.  When I read it, I truly wondered if I had been to the same interview.  (In all fairness, it had nothing to do with anything serious, but was instead about a “Soldier of the Month” competition.)  

Years later, while I was a prosecutor, I once had a news print reporter shove a tape recorder in my face at the end of an argument before the Court.  Taking the page from my earlier experience, I decided the smart thing was to simply say, “I explained it all inside the Courthouse, and really have nothing more I can add here.”  Damned if I didn’t get misquoted yet again, but this time with some funnier results.  It seems that I did all my talking in the “outhouse.”   Either the editor missed it, or they believed I was full of excrement.  Now that I think about it, and knowing that particular newspaper, the latter was probably their opinion. ~ Michael S. Pauley