From msn.com, “The House Jan. 6 committee has tried to recruit high-profile journalists to write its report about the attack on the Capitol, hoping to build a narrative thriller that compels audiences and is a departure from government reports of yore. Committee members and staffers are seeking to compile dramatic videos, texts and emails in a digital format that is easy to understand — and easy to share on social media. And they want to put together blockbuster televised hearings that the public actually tunes into, according to people with knowledge of the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. Their challenge: Making the public care deeply — and read hundreds of pages more — about an event that happened more than a year ago, and that many Americans feel they already understand.”
I have to commend the committee members; they understand the uphill battle, and they are on the right track to solving the American apathy problem. Lord knows if there is one thing most Americans lack is a basic sense of civic duty. Furthermore, Americans are morons. They have no attention span; they lack critical thinking skills; they don’t read much (Twitter and Facebook don’t count); they prefer entertainment to enlightenment. So, how does the committee overcome these seemingly insurmountable obstacles? Easy: Make the House Jan. 6 committee findings into a mini-series! They could probably tell their story in three two-hour T.V./streaming episodes. The only way most Americans learn history and absorb information is by watching some quasi-historical melodrama. The magic formula is relatively straightforward — good vs. evil, hero vs. villain, white-hat vs. black-hat. And movies have been a tried-and-true format of storytelling for a century, so take a page from screenwriters, movie studios, and America’s favorite (trusted) actors: Make the report into a movie! I recommend the action-thriller genre with a splash of horror and Greek tragedy — that sums up the state of America aptly. Welcome to stupid America! The “entertain me country.”