The title says it all.
"Silent Cal" was a quiet Vermonter who spoke when he had something to say - and it wasn't often - but it was usually worth listening to.
The compulsion for verbiage, encouraged by 24/7 "news" (and that word must be used advisedly) has filled the airwaves and the internet with very little that is worth listening to or reading. It has driven the press to make news about every aspect of the "interviewee's" (and that word must be regarded with equal suspicion) life - excuse me, lifestyle - so that reportage (a fashionable word for unimportant facts and opinions) focuses on the inconsequential.
Unfortunately, the degradation of discourse has been paralleled by a decline in the populace basing its views on substantive - and substantiated - reason and relevant facts. Such reasoned argument as exists has become lost in the morass of cliché, evasion, equivocation, deliberate misunderstanding of the question and dissembling, leaving people few criteria on which to base their reasons for voting for (or against) someone.
There is something that can be done, but it will require the (ahem!) co-operation of all politicians: let's make April 1st Calvin Coolidge Day.
On April 1st, ALL politicians refrain from saying ANYTHING to any media representative. They are silent. All day. Midnight to Midnight.
What could be more sensible? No one would believe what they said on April 1st anyway, and it would be great experiment to how well we could all survive without comments on Chris Dodd's socks, or Vice President Beiden's tie, or that fact that the majority of Supreme Court justices are cat-lovers. (So many cats; so few recipes.)
Okay, there's the challenge: No one in elected public office talks to the press on April 1, 2010.
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