Mediocrity

I recall the night on CNN when the news finally broke open, with the bailout of AIG in the wake of Freddie/Mae and those giant bank failures, and about how we were now staring at financial catastrophe. That broadcast was an all-consuming, serious hustle for about 3-4 hours. What a rare, exquisite occurence it was--maybe one reason way some refer to the apocalypse as rapture--and certainly refreshing to watch CNN "keeping it real," because it had no choice. The nightly dosage of strong, long-lasting, unrelentingly dumb blabber was transformed into an alert and focused dialogue. The guest commentators were all new, all inside experts from the innumerable compartments and innards of the system. One was from the Wall Street Journal, who for years trod on a well-established journalistic track to document the illegal and destructive financial activites of some of these failing companies and their leadership cores. He never would have been on air otherwise, but given the chance, he expressed his opinion that a full congressional inquiry and a serious ethics scandal with accompanying jailtime was completely inevitable. He could afford to be certain due to the breadth of his knowledge, but he seemed more certain because of its simplicity: evidence of major crimes was undeniable, uncontestable, factually true and highly accurate, a generously helpful non-lie. Any thorough investigation would end up with the same conclusions. We would only be so lucky. But a lot of very important things were said outloud, and it was great to see mediocrity rise above itself so thoroughly for a while, or, to put it another way, it was great to see mediocrity's exposed core being substantial.