The Oppenheimer Report 10/15/18

Today, winter is definitely in the air, and this first cold, damp day of fall always knocks the wind out of my sails. Looking at the angry lake, and my boat bobbing up and down at the dock, I realize that the time has come for me to put it away for the season. Every year I experience the same denial. Seems like just yesterday I was dropping the retractable dock for the summer season. In fact, I didn’t get out on the boat all that much this season. There was an ongoing electrical problem with the motor which caused it to keep running after it was turned off, sometimes for fifteen or twenty minutes. This was a new motor, allegedly under warranty, but my marina could not figure out the problem. We swapped out three key switches and still the problem kept resurfacing. To complicate matters, my marina gave up their Evinrude dealership during the time when I had the ongoing problem. I eventually ended up having it repaired in Huntsville, but the season here is too short for motor problems. I’m still fighting with BRP to acknowledge that this problem was never fixed during the warranty period, even though the issue was well documented. The boat went in the water in July, and now, quite suddenly, it’s October. In the twenty-five years I’d owned the previous motor (a Yamaha), I never had one issue. Guess they don’t make ‘em the way they used to.

There was a local news story today which caused some controversy on the Hunters Bay Radio Facebook page. A car drove over a fifty-foot cliff at an elevated lookout overlooking Huntsville, and HBR posted a photo of the wrecked vehicle. Shortly thereafter, a comment was posted under the photo, suggesting that the photo was in poor taste and that it was not appropriate coverage for a community radio station. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Still, the comment sparked a lot of debate about what is appropriate news to cover, and I found myself a little perplexed. I know it’s sensationalistic, and perhaps it's even grisly, but come on! In a small town, when someone drives a car with passengers over a fifty foot cliff, after pushing a boulder out of the way with the car to do so, dangling off the cliff for a period of time before plunging fifty feet to the ground below; well, I think that is newsworthy. And yes, I'd like to see what happened. It doesn't mean I revel in someone else's misfortune, but are we not exposed to horrible news every day?

Saudi royalty ordered a hit on disruptive Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and got caught by the world doing it. Now they're trying to spin it as an interrogation gone bad but nobody's buying it. The world is indignant, including Canada, but so far no one is tearing up any lucrative military contracts. No sooner did Hurricane Florence hammer the Carolinas, then Hurricane Michael whips up into a Cat 4 hurricane, wipes the Florida Panhandle clean, and we’re off to the races again. Speaking of horrible things I don’t need to see on a screen (but probably will someday); I am certain that, sooner or later, some hurricane-chasing newscaster will get flattened by a piece of flying debris on air and carried off into a roiling sea. I am also certain it will be watched by tens of millions of people. Sadly, that's just how it is, if you are remotely connected to social media or television, or just the world around you, you are going to see things you wish you hadn't. You can turn away if you so chose. But, when I see the controversy over a possibly inappropriate photograph, posted on a community radio Facebook page, I want to tell the dissenter, I think maybe the Good Ship Indignation has sailed. Know what I mean? You're barking up the wrong tree with both oars out of the water, and you didn't look before you leaped.