Not everybody is paying attention, not everybody cares, and not everybody is spending their days doomscrolling, listening to news/talk radio, or tuning into Fox News.
We in America are, of course, going through some things, and however you want to justify any of it, it’s looking very bad. The very idea that I can drive about an hour and be at the entrance to what fulfills the definition of a concentration camp is mind-boggling, as is the glee with which some people — including the leaders of government — are behaving.
Even if you think it’s okay to round up people without a trial and due process and deport them, “Alligator Alcatraz” is a particularly cruel idea. It’s here, a quick drive down the Turnpike.
Also, a slightly quicker quick drive down the Turnpike is the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, which some of you will recognize as the “Guitar Hotel,” with a tower shaped like a guitar that lights up with animation and beams of light forming the neck at night. Fly into Fort Lauderdale and you’ll see it up close out the right side windows. Saturday evening, for my birthday (thanks to all who sent their greetings), Fran decided to take me there for a special dinner at Council Oak, which was excellent and highly recommended.
The rest of the place, well, imagine a junior version of a Vegas casino populated by a youngish Broward County crowd (think “Jersey Shore”). The longest queue was for the nightclub, and everyone in the line had drinks already in hand. Party!
Walking around the place, I couldn’t help but notice that everybody was grinning and goofing around (and dressed as if they do not have access to a mirror, but that’s another story). The news of the weekend – the severe budget cuts to practically every good part of the federal government, the floods in Texas, Alligator Alcatraz – wasn’t reflected by the demeanor of the crowds.
Elsewhere, people gathered to watch ball games, fireworks, movies, and drone shows, eat some barbecue, visit family…in other words, a normal holiday weekend. It’s as if the bad stuff isn’t happening. Put a perfectly grilled New York strip in front of me and I, too, can forget for at least a meal that the world seems to have gone off the rails.
This isn’t new. Books and movies have depicted how for some people in Germany, life went on even as the Nazis rose to power and neighbors were disappearing. Life has to go on, right? There’s work to be done, bills to pay, mouths to feed. The average citizen can’t do anything about the bad stuff anyway, or at least they think they’re powerless. (A general strike might prove otherwise, but getting that together would be quite a task.)
Some even welcome the evil. And they all ignore what’s right in front of them until it affects them directly. Those direct effects are starting to show up now, but at least in the interim, the party is still going on at the guitar-shaped casino.
What does this have to do with the radio, or the media, or news? It means that there’s a huge audience that doesn’t want to hear about the latest from Washington or Tehran or Gaza. How are they even getting news? ARE they getting news, and is a lack of communication why they don’t worry about what’s happening? In 2025, news is filtered through TikTok and delivered by influencers. People can easily be led to believe that no news is real, that science is a sham, that violating human rights is a good thing.
In that light, there’s a place for truth-tellers and trusted sources of information to counter the lies. Can you reach those people wandering through the casino in bathing suits with frozen novelty cocktails in both hands? Maybe. Can you do it with radio (or TV, or print, or even older social media like Xitter or Facebook? Probably not. Podcasts? Mmmmmaybe. TikTok and Reels? Also maybe.
That’s going to take a fundamental change in how traditional media does its job(s), just as losing a chunk of the music audience to Spotify and Apple Music means music radio has to reevaluate its business model. Like them or not, the people at the casino are the latest generation to reach adulthood, and they are not listening to you. It’s how people in high positions get away with what they do: too many people are not paying attention, or as the late Neil Postman wrote, “amusing themselves to death.” Or they’re led to fixate on one issue (Immigration! Abortion! The Middle East! The budget!) and ignore anything else.
Telling the truth and having people pay attention has gotten harder, but it’s necessary. It’s time to measure whether you’re up to the task.
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Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
