Editors note: The Ethos R. Newsworthy column, penned by Into the Hill Senior Contributing Writer, Mr. Riley Miller, but under the uber-appropriate pseudonym Ethos R. Newsworthy, will be a sometimes serious, sometimes satirical examination of the important pieces of news and information that dominate the artistic world. We are all consumers each day of vast amounts of information and knowledge, some worthwhile, much of it not. It is up to each of us, in our own way, to learn discernment and discretion when wading through the mire of modern (and yes, postmodern) culture. We invite you to join Mr. Miller as he explores what it means to be discerning - while still attempting, or failing, to be hip.
You might find that some of the news items you find in the column are outlandish. Or just false. Some of them probably are. You can never tell what Mr. Miller will want to discuss.
The following is Mr. Miller’s introductory column.
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by RILEY MILLER
We live in a big, busy world. Vain as weekly bits of blogosphere might appear, it is the observation of this author that such flickerings yet are flame. And as time goes from this post to future ones, let’s the two of us feel these flickerings and see them. Let’s measure their degrees of warmth and light. Let’s get down right Promethean with them, carrying them at cost to ourselves to those to whom we thinks it’s due.
The concept for this column was extracted from a news column of similar ilk I ran in a local arts publication once a week for about a year. It should be known the publication tanked.
The name “Ethos R. Newsworthy” is perfect for what I intend. For an ethos is “the characteristic spirit of an era or culture, as seen by its beliefs and aspirations;” ex: the hippified questions of the 60s, the glam excess of the 80s. So in considering the name, is our real-life, breathing, elephant of an ethos newsworthy? And how is the news that is presented (whatever sort of vain or important) characteristic of my ethos, if so how is it?
It’s interesting to me that a culture can demand what kind of news they want to hear and how they want it spun, that is, how they want it to feel when they hear the news they want to hear. And when their particular version of events is heard, we can almost all understand why that one guy has a sign at a Republican rally that says, “Barack Osama Bin Laden Hussein is a Terrorist.”
As we consider just what is our current ethos, I think we first have to spend some moments slowing down enough to realize we’re in it and a part of it; dirty ol’ causation, that’s me, that’s you, we’re effected and causing, just as the rest of them. I think few are happy with, “the direction things are going, these days,” and fun as posturing pessimism is, it gets us only a little wiser. No, direction out of embarrassment towards our ethos to whatever sort of “better world” we envision starts with each of us personally.
So as we sift out ourselves from the mud and sand and muck of our very own modern ethos, it seems clear to me that a consideration of the news is just the thing in order to shake the sieve. If each story moves us, and if some of it removes some of you from some of me so that we can see more clearly ourselves as separate from what the rest of the world believes, aka, our ethos, then I have done my job.
And even, might we see another blurb about Lindsay’s Sam or Oprah’s waistline as real questions and definitive answers like air horn emphases about what we deem relevant and characteristic of our very own society. What if, for a moment, we might view these as tactical offense, premeditated, aimed, and intending to gain the grounds of morality and vanity? Have we seen the enemy succeed or fail, gain ground or lose it? Might by the end of this self examination we see The New York Times be a battlefield wherein ten hundred thousand single consonants and vowels gather in formation as soldiers alive, bleeding ink, and slain for real positions this way or that into the territory of the other camp?
Seriously.
The attitude of this column involves a thought that the modern ethos is seen, shaped, and created by the news that is presented. However big or small, the news presented both measures and states events that happen in the culture and, yet, the way those events are expressed to the culture effects the culture; more so, it creates the culture producing the news. However bright and hot or dulled to unseen embers your newish findings here be, it is my hope you each take time to not only consider what has burnt and gone to make this present glow, but, too, to consider what responsibility you have, yourself, in becoming sensitive and sourced before fanning future flames.
~Ethos R. Newsworthy
