Enough Blame to Go Around

"All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy." -Wayne Dyer

I've noticed a disturbing and annoying trend as of late.

It's not easy figuring out what's going on in the world. The media is NOT forthcoming for a variety of reasons. They say, they're just catering to what 'the people' want. Maybe. Maybe they're just kowtowing to what their corporate sponsers want. Regardless, it's hard these days finding news of substance, unbiased, that has nothing to do with celebrities or economic woes.

The disturbing trend I was referring to earlier is the way 'news casters' (or 'infotainers') are just wild about playing 'the blame game'.

Here's what bugs me: the newscasters (or as I like to call them 'infotainers') are framing everything in terms of 'who's to blame?' Instead of simply reporting on an issue, giving us some actual information, they want to beat the dead horse of 'Whose fault is it that we're in this situation? Who's to blame for this?' They want to figure out blame, why? To punish? Hold someone accountable?

At this time in history we're on news overload with 24 hours of it on many stations. Instead of substance, we get meatloaf with a lot of bread crumbs. . . the inane blathering just stretches out an already somewhat unhealthy agenda. Non stop static, hybrid newscasters/cultural critics/game show hosts. . .

At this point, the news is mostly breadcrumbs. And they're stale. And the meat might be tainted. And I'm a vegetarian anyway.

And don't think I'm pitting one station against another. . . they're all doing it. With the one exception of Jon Stewart, whose comedy show transmits more actual news in 23 minutes than all the other stations combined give out in 24 hours, I'm over it.

Our culture is so quick to assign blame without even attempting to assign solutions. When will we figure out how to get out of the messes we find ourselves in? Let's change the frame around a bit and look at that.

The ratings are better when the news is bad or humiliating or if it's about this one fighting with that one or if we can find a bad guy to taunt or hunt down (but maybe not capture . . .Osama, for example). Who's to blame here? Whose fault is this? Oops. .. I've just proven the point and blamed others for blaming.

Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to sell to affluent clients using persuasion strategies. He runs unique public and private seminars and offers home study courses, audio/visual learning tools, and coaching programs in persuasion techniques. Find more free articles at www.MAXpersuasion.com/blog. Be sure to sign up for his free report entitled "Yes! Persuasion."