Sonny Weather Lover

Recently, YouTube recommended to me an interview of the late Sonny Fox, a television host and broadcaster. In the several-minute clip, the man discusses being a POW in Nazi Germany and how it dramatically altered his life outlook. Once upon a time, Sonny Fox hosted a local Sunday morning show for kids called Wonderama. I vividly remember the show with Bob McAllister, Sonny’s successor, as the host.

Anyway, I learned that he was drafted into the army as a teenager and captured in the Battle of the Bulge a year later. Having grown up in the more sanitized and sheltered 1970s, the notion of being shipped overseas and fighting a war was inconceivable to me and so many others of my generation. Compared to the World War II generation, we were a cosseted lot, but nothing quite like the current college-aged youth with their safe spaces, trigger meltdowns, and desire to destroy people who don’t tow the woke line hook, line, and sinker.    

As we near a complete year of COVID-19 disruptions, restrictions, and assorted mania, there is finally some light at the end of the tunnel. Multiple vaccines have come to the rescue! It’s been quite a roller-coaster ride from last March to this one—not especially uplifting but very enlightening on a whole host of fronts. The extremes on both sides of the political spectrum have been unmasked and it’s not a reassuring picture. The scary thing is that the extremists—right and left—appear to be pulling the strings of the two major parties. Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the good old days—pre-social media—when loony conspiracy theories, manufactured and misplaced outrage, and daily calls for censorship didn’t travel at the speed of light? When the loons among us were identified as loons and not in important positions of authority and pulling the levers of power?

Speaking of loons—or Looney Tunes in this instance—a New York Times op-ed columnist, Charles W. Blow, believes that the amorphous animated Pepe Le Pew “added to rape culture” by his aggressive behavior towards the opposite sex. Honestly, I thought the whole point of Pepe Le Pew was that he was a skunk—not a role model for the impressionable. In fact, Looney Tunes characters were, by and large, of very poor character, as it were, and always got their comeuppances. So, this is how far we’ve sunk. The Onion, the premier satirical source of all the news that’s fit to print, is nowadays competing against a reality, which increasingly feels like a lampoon of one.

And there’s no such thing as Dr. Seuss or Disneyland and Mother Goose. I just discovered that a nephew of mine’s favorite book as a child was And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I don’t remember reading that one, but shame on eBay for outlawing sales of the book and others on its auction site. It’s especially absurd considering the stuff that is permitted on eBay. I won’t bother reciting the litany. Thirteen minutes ago, Michelle Obama and the preponderance of the wider world didn’t have a problem with the books.

A much bigger corporate concern is Google’s algorithmic behavior. John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” Google now asks, “If a representation is factually accurate, can it still be algorithmic unfairness?” Apparently, yes, when “it may be desirable to consider how we might help society reach a more fair and equitable state, via either product intervention or broader corporate social responsibility efforts.” If this doesn’t worry you, it should! Coming to a Google search near you—only the facts approved by the woke shirts and skirts. Sonny weather…stormy weather: Sergeant Joe Friday, where are you?