The left-leaning Arizona Republic columnist, EJ Montini, bemoans the loss of his sense of “awe” when it comes to politicians, entertainers, writers and ballplayers.
Liberal columnist EJ Montini regularly tears down politicians, yet he bemoans the loss of a sense of awe. (azcentral.com)
“One of the worst things about the news business is that it robs you of your sense of awe,” he writes, “you recognize very quickly that the rich and famous and powerful are just … people.”
While commenting on the cynical times we live in, he owes it to television and social media, but fails to recognize that he regularly tears these people down in his columns.
“Individuals for whom previous generations would have looked upon with awe, simply owing to their status, we look upon with suspicion, even disdain,” he writes as he refers to outgoing Governor Jan Brewer.
He blames cynical parents for robbing their children of their sense of awe when it is he, with his liberal views, who persuade us to view people and events cynically. If that were so, how does he explain the majority of those in the audience at President Obama’s Central High School appearance were impressionable teenagers?
Several students expressed their appreciation that the president would visit their school, citing that it doesn’t have the best reputation.
When President Kennedy visited to the Pennsylvania town where he lived in 1962, Montini recalled how his mother kept him out of school so he could see him. He doesn’t remember what his mother said that day, believing she couldn’t speak. Awe.
He wrote of his envy of the “people who waited outside in the cold for tickets to see President Obama,” adding that they just wanted to see the president; to be in the same room with the president.
When it comes to people like these, who he noted, “haven’t given in to the acrimony, the distrust and the bitterness that pervades our daily lives, I feel only one thing: Awe.”
In my view, Montini can credit the current miserable state of newspaper readership – the low information crowd – for that “awe” that still exists among a few. Thank goodness they aren’t aware of his column.
