Almost famous

Last night my parent council group got an email asking us for someone to do an interview about the signs outside Pinkie Pie's school.  Apparently there were signs near the school telling drivers to slow down and then the signs were removed.  None of us felt interested in being interviewed about the subject.

Today when I was dropping Pinkie Pie off at school a man with a big television camera approached me.  He starting talking really fast and tried to get me to talk to him about those same signs.  I suppose their attempts to round up somebody to interview about them had failed so he resorted to randomly asking people on the street about it.  After just a few moments it became clear that he was looking for exactly one thing:  Outrage.

I don't know exactly what sort of outrage he was hunting for.  He might have been wanting someone to shout "Think of the children!" because they were angry about 'slow down' signs being taken away.  He might have wanted me to be angry about the signs going up in the first place, something like "Damn city hall, always making my commute longer!"  Heck, he might have wanted me to be outraged about the waste of "My taxpayer dollars!"

Or maybe he would have been happy with any sort of outrage at all.  Hard to say.

Unfortunately for him all I had was a shrug and a lack of interest.  I didn't much notice the signs, I don't know why they were put up or taken down, and I certainly lack any good data with which to decide what they should have done.

I know that sometimes the government does wasteful things, but you can't expect perfection.  Sometimes you try stuff to see if it works and then it doesn't so you try something else.  That isn't a sign of inefficiency, it is just how people try to fix problems.  I also know that if you want to supply useful news to the public about an event it is nearly worthless to get a random person on the street to be outraged on camera about a topic they are clueless about.

If I had thought I would get on TV I would have been really tempted to give him his interview and turn it to my own purposes.  I would have happily been outraged about how news programs trade on emotional people and ignorant outrage to get ratings instead of supplying information from people who actually know what the hell they are talking about.  I would happily have chastised the news program for trying to use me for shock value and being focused on upset people instead of facts.

But no way would they put that on TV, so there was no point.  I just acted like I didn't know anything and didn't care about the subject, which was easy because I don't know anything about it and I don't care about the subject.  He quickly realized that he was not getting what he wanted from me and went away to find someone who would be angry on camera for him.

I hope he didn't find anyone.  But he probably did - people like to be angry about stuff they don't know anything about, I have noticed.