<\/a>I don\u2019t get it. Since before kindergarten I was told to pay attention. I guess that the constant reminding finally was pounded in, or more importantly over time the concept seemed to make sense. So when I watch something like a presidential debate, the most I can do is to try to look, listen and hopefully learn.<\/p>\n

Not too many years ago, that was what most other debate watchers did, or seemed to do. Maybe they were multi-tasking in ways that included dish-washing, crossword puzzles or folding laundry. But today\u2019s multi-tasking seems unfathomable to me.<\/p>\n

How can someone actually be paying attention to the debate and at the same time opining on Twitter or Facebook? This is all done live and there are no built-in \u201ccessation of plays\u201d like with a baseball or football game. I\u2019ve heard that the mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time, but I guess that does not limit it from being like a pinball and going from one direction to another almost instantaneously.<\/p>\n

For whatever reason, I seem to be a little skeptical of the instant fact-checking. Yes, when a candidate says something, it is relatively easy to look up whether it is true, false, half-true or pants on fire. But how can someone be researching and confirming this while hearing the next words out of the candidates\u2019 mouths.<\/p>\n

Maybe the answer is that it takes a village. One person is carefully listening and shouts out, \u201cDid Trump actually say that more nations should have nuclear weapons\u201d and a second person looks it up. Perhaps it takes a third person to put the answer on social media, and the process continues.<\/p>\n

Has debate-watching become corporatized? Or maybe a better question is \u201chas it always been corporatized?\u201d I don\u2019t know. What I do know is that I have always been a member of the Slow Reader Society and that might mean that I\u2019m slow at processing a lot of things.<\/p>\n

Well, there\u2019s no sorrow here. I\u2019m comfortable with the lumbering and perhaps old-fashioned way that I do it. But my dream of being a CNN talking head will never come true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t get it. Since before kindergarten I was told to pay attention. I guess that the constant reminding finally was pounded in, or<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,1],"tags":[396,2787,2788],"yoast_head":"\n