As a young man in junior high school, I loved listening to the replays of the old radio serials. Late at night, the AM signals were stronger and there was a station that replayed the programs of the ‘Golden Age of Radio’. I could imagine families that had just finished eating dinner as a family. Cleaning the dishes, then sitting around a radio the size of a washing machine. The patriarch of the family taking his chair by the controls, the matriarch in her comfortable chair and the children sitting on the floor listening to shows like Fibber McGee and Molly, Flash Gordon, The Shadow and Burns and Allen, much like depicted in the movie ‘A Christmas Story with Daren McGaven ,’…you’ll shoot your eye out”. Being transported to Fibber McGees as he is about to open his closet and trying to tell him not to open it. Standing next to Flash Gordon on his space ship fighting the evil aliens or watching The Shadow fight evil in the theater of the mind. The radio was a connection to not only the world, but an escape for a small time to another place. This was a time before TV when you would get the news on the radio. Before WWII and America was still in a depression. If you did not have a radio, some families might be invited to listen to a nieghbors radio.

In those days, a radio director had to be good and creative in order to transport you and make you see, in your mind, what he saw thru sound only. There was a man that I will call the Alfred Hitchcock of radio.It was the night before Holloween of 1938, when a man named Orson Wells performed a modern retelling of an H.G. Welles story called ‘War of the Worlds’. Because this was not a sponsored show, there were no intermissions or commercial breaks. But at the start, twice near the middle and again at the end, the audience was informed that this was a play, but Orson Wells knew how to tell a story. As the show began at 8 p.m. A narrators voice announced: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.” Those people that had missed the beginning, tuned into what seemed like a news report of an alien attack from the planet Mars. As Orson Wells built up the tension through sound, and oddly enough the lack of sound, there were some people that truely believed there were Martians attacking. A sound man placed a microphone in an empty toilet bowl and slowly opened a glass jar to give an ominous sound of the Martian spacecraft opening up. The fake news reporter had studied the reports of the Hindenburg disaster and emulated that style of reporting. Then, as he was reporting Martian lasers attacking and tenticles flayling about, silence. To emulate dead air. People assumed the news reporter had sucumbed to the martian death rays. Those people that did not have the full story that this was just a show. They belived aliens from the planet Mars was in fact attacking. Reports say that the attack started in Grovers Mill, New Jersey and was fast spreading. there were reports of panic and, unfortunately there were people just did not have the full story, believed the fake news and reacted instead of using reason.

Watching the presstitutes ( fake news press members that sold their integrity to the extreme left) and the fake news of today reminds me of that time. People of todayjust don’t have the full story. Never, and I mean never in this countries history has there been so much vitrial against a president. There is something called the ‘honeymoon’ period in which a President, even one as incompetant as Barrack Hussein Obama, is allowed to get their agenda established and court appointees appointed. But not President Trump. Since the day he was the President elect, there has been attacks from all sides. Lies have been said against him from both Republicans and Democrats. The fake news has specifically NOT been reporting the news, and instead have been focusing on the fake news. No one is focusing on the REAL Russia collusion between Hillary Clinton and the Kremlin, but instead, focusing on the FAKE relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which in over two years not ane piece of evidence has been revieled.

Everyone knows of the sexual improprieties of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Kennedy and many other high level members of the democratic leaning government. The double standard has never been so apperant. If a member of the Democratic party does it, it seems to be a resume enhancement event but if a member of the Republican party does it, he is to be escoriated and crucified. No one is accusing President Donald Trump of being a passenger on a plane whos destination is sex island full of underaged girls forced to work as prostitutes. But the biggest known secret is the left leaning media that chooses what to report and what to hide. And the media can’t see the self destruction. How many newspapers are failing or have already folded? In my town, the newspaper has already sold 1 of its 2 buildings and leased out half of its remaining building. Many other news organisations are suffering the same fate. For years, they reported fake news, but with so many options for the individual to obtain news, the media is almost irrelevant.

But there are still alot of people that will go thru life without the whole story. If you are one to go thru life without the whole story, you may believe monsters are attacking where there are none. I think our politicians are one of the groups that believe the fake news. If you hear reports of martians landing in Washington D.C. or Grovers Mill New Jersey, don’t panic and don’t believe the reports. Get the Whole story first BEFORE reacting.

OK, I admit that to some I may be old. I remember rotary dial telephones, party lines, black and white televisions and antennas on top of rooftops. I grew up in Los Angeles California, so we had it really good. We had channel 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and sometimes channel 13. Channel 2, 4 and 7 were major networks. If memory serves correctly channel 2 was ABC, 4 was NBC and 7 was CBS. Channel 5, 9, 11 and 13 were more local channels. At first, our family had 1 TV. It was a monochrome TV and believe it or not, my parents had a remote. It was called children. Me or my sister would change the station for our parents or even readjust the ‘rabbit ears’ on the TV. Dad was the only one to adjust the rooftop antenna for safety reasons of course. It was a big deal when my parents saved up and bought a used color TV on a swivel base. That thing seemed to be possessed because when it got hot, the color would slowly fade. My father got mad one day and open hand slapped the side of the TV and voila, the color snapped back like someone passing out and sniffing smelling salts. It got to the point that, when my dad got up to smack the TV, the color would snap back before my dad could smack it.

In those days, I noticed that when the networks had the news on, they all ran the same news in the same order and had commercials at about the same time. So it never really mattered what station you watched, the news was the same. You basically chose a station for the news anchor that you liked or trusted the most. My grandfather listened to news radio while driving. He listened to ‘KFWB News 98. Give us 10 minutes and we will give you the world’ was there tagline for many years.

In todays world, I noticed that as soon as I get home, the TV is turned on. While it is mostly for the noise, you tend to gravitate to shows that you like. Being a child of the 60’s and 70’s, I gravitated to shows like the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, the Hitchcock mystery hour not to mention a few cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Road Runner (beep beep), Rocky and Bullwinkle, Tom Slick, George of the Jungle, the list can go on and on. So today, I still like Science Fiction but I also like the National Geographic channel. My wife like the food network with shows like ‘Chopped’ or ‘Guys Grocery…(whatever). Well, in the 60’s and 70’s, we used antennas to capture television over the air. Then, there was Cable TV and you no longer had to see static when the weather was bad. You would pay a little money and get stations over the air plus movie channels like HBO, Showtime and others. Suddenly there were literally hundreds of stations available. Enter technology today where you can, with the help of modern technology, ‘stream’ whatever you want to watch whenever you want to watch them. So imagine my surprise when my cable company raised its rates. Suddenly, I am paying around $150 a month just for cable and I still can’t get just what I want. So I took control away from my cable company and cancelled cable. They could not understand what I was going to do. They kept telling me that they had all the stations that I wanted and that I would no longer get (enter special programs here). But If I would sign a 2 year contract AND let then put a landline phone in my house, I could save $10/mo. A landline? Who uses a landline? Even my parents who are in there 70’s no longer have a landline. I told the cable company representative that adding a landline to my house is a huge step back in technology, worse than trading in my flat screen High Definition TV for an old tube monochrome unit. So, like so many others, I took control back. I have Hulu, Netflix, Roku TV, Amazon Prime video, CRTV and many others. But there is still one more thing that gives me ultimate control.

Many years back, John Ritter and Pam Dawber made a movie called “Stay Tuned” (1992). The premise of the movie was that a family man is temped by the devil to accept a special satellite dish to get hundreds of movies and TV stations. That satellite dish transported them to a world of twisted TV shows where he and his wife try to escape. They must escape shows like ‘Running over Miss Daisy, a twisted version of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’. Many other twisted versions of TV shows and movies that they must escape. Their kids can see them on TV but cant believe it nor help them. I remember the very end when his wife said to him, and I can only paraphrase as it has been years since I have seen the movie, ‘what do you do when you want the TV to stop?’. He then, finally, and to the devils surprise, pushed the OFF button of the remote returning him and his wife to their home and back to normal life.

The ultimate control is you. With so many choices in life, the OFF button on the remote gives you the ultimate control. Choices give a person control. The fewer choices, the less control. The more choices, the more control. When a government ‘takes’ your money and says to you ‘we will care for you because we know better than you’ you have had your choices removed. The government then controls you because you have fewer choices.

I think that our countries forefathers instinctively knew that. The Constitution of the United States of America was written to control government not the people. You have heard the slogan ‘My body My choice’, well, don’t let anyone take away your choices. Remember, you have the ultimate control….. Just don’t try to control me, remember my life my choice. And I chose to turn the TV off to write this.