Tell Me Something I <i>Do</i> Know
Wait, that's not quite right. It's just hard to think straight when one is inundated with all of these "tax day" stories. Turn on the cable news channels, read the newspaper, click over to CBSNews.com, and there it is – a story about how today - is - the -day - and - oh - my - god - did - you - file - yours - yet - because - I'm-such - a - procrastinator!
I mean, is there really anyone out there who doesn't know it's tax day? The big day has been in the news for months, and besides, most of us pay taxes – which means we probably checked the date by which we need to finish them. And yet we get ledes like this, from the CBSNews.com/AP story: "For most Americans who have put off doing income taxes until the last minute – time's up." I think most Americans, regardless of whether or not they've put off doing their taxes, would respond with a resounding "no duh." But that doesn't mean that just about every station in the country won't feature the obligatory shots from the local post office on the 11:00 news.
I understand why news outlets feel compelled to do these stories. There's something in the American psyche that makes us need our media outlets to point out the obvious, even if everyone already knows it to be true. It doesn't just happen on Tax Day – around holidays like Memorial Day, Labor Day and July 4, for example, correspondents are forced to do the obligatory boy-there-are-a-lot-of-people-traveling stories. "When you are the transportation correspondent, for some reason, editors feel compelled to have you handle the 'holiday travel' piece," Bob Orr grumbled to us in March. "Here's the way my Memorial Day story will begin: 'Across America, highways are crammed, airplanes are jammed and travelers are short on patience.'"
Short on patience for travel, that is. We seem to have infinite patience for stories about travel, even if we've seen them a hundred times before.
I remember one summer when I was living in Connecticut and we were suffering through a heat wave. I happened to catch the local news, which led, of course, with the fact that it was hot out. Then the anchors cut to the correspondents in the field. One was at a local barbeque, where the revelers confirmed that yes, it sure was hot out. Another correspondent was at a swimming poll, where, apparently, people also felt that it was hot. (Apparently, however, water can cool you down. Who knew?) Then they cut to the weatherman, who told us that, yes, it sure was hot. Really hot!
There are sometimes fresh angles to be found in these kinds of stories – CBS News, for example, offered a poll on whether people feel they pay their fair share of income taxes – but most of them stick to the tried and true formula of telling us something the vast majority of us already know and not much else. I guess we don't feel like we're getting the "news" unless there's some acknowledgement of the big, shared experience of the day, even if everyone already knows about it. We may all know it's tax day, but that doesn't mean we don't want, over and over again, to be reminded.