Native Writes: Getting straight info

I fell asleep during the State of The Nation speech and am currently trying to piece together what was said.

It’s not going to happen. Depending on the news channel, the speech was either magnificent or a danger to national security.

That, my friends, is what has given birth to the label, “fake news.”

Which brings me to something I learned long ago. No two people will describe anything they saw without injecting themselves into it.

I once attended a seminar and listened to an “expert” describe the difference in reactions between men and women, the affluent and the poor, educated versus not educated and urban versus rural dwellers.

Using a fatal traffic accident as an example, he suggested a man would describe the vehicles while a woman would talk about what the victim or victims were wearing.

Only the investigative officers would report the unvarnished truth. They are trained to do this. Everyone else might form another opinion.

I don’t believe I have ever seen people in action at crash scenes.

At least, I hadn’t until a train carrying lawmakers to a retreat hit a trash truck stalled on the tracks.

One man walked forward through several train cars to view the crash scene. He didn’t describe the truck but talked about a body lying under a sheet next to it.

That debunks the theory that men don’t notice the people involved in a crash. I didn’t get his name, but he seemed to be genuinely concerned.

Learning that many lawmakers were taking their families along, I wondered how the children would be affected. No one meant for that to happen and something tragic can stick with a child for a lifetime. #MeToo.

Buses arrived and everyone went on his/her way. Congressmom and dad have some ‘splainin’ to do.
It hasn’t always been so easy.

Standing at a scene in which a man had been squashed between two trucks, I heard no one talking about what the guy was wearing. Of course, I was the only woman there and they were watching to see if I would drop my dinner. It didn’t happen and I went back to the newspaper office to see if Lloyd Engen could go out with a better camera.

One of the detectives called me to ask if I was okay, since someone else went to take pictures. Weak camera, not weak stomach.

I honestly didn’t notice what the guy was wearing. I just talked with an officer there and said I would appreciate more details when they were available.

Looking back over my career, I can’t say I ever tried to investigate any accident. I have relied on the investigators to fill me in.

Level-headed investigators aren’t being interviewed regarding the State of The Union speech, but Joe Kennedy III’s short speech has been played in its entirety.

You ought to like a guy who speaks in a high school gym alongside a project car. Trump just had a couple of bobble heads in the background, which made him seem distant from the common man and woman.

The pundits are jumping all over each other to analyze Trump’s speech, counting the “lies” and inaccuracies, but Kennedy’s speech has been left to speak for itself.

He was “too idealistic?”

People want to know, “Was that saliva at the corner of his mouth?”

He could have been drooling at the idea of a presidential run. He says it was a chap stick.

Sure, many of us are worried about our nation’s future, but a straight report isn’t readily available.

Which begs the question: Who do we trust?