Anyone out there remember the election year sound truck?
Before TV and Twitter-X became bludgeons of choice in American politics, we had the sound truck, grandpa of today’s cable shows.
In its day, which ended about 50 years ago, the sound truck – any vehicle with a loudspeaker – could be counted on at election time to roll through the streets squawking that we must vote for this candidate or that candidate.
Now we have the cable channels, howling left and bleating right, day-in and over night. And that’s in the off season, that blessed half year between 18-month campaign seasons. They have ramped up again. Nothing new will be said, but it will be said louder and longer.
During the sound truck days there at least were limits. As election day approached the commercials increased in frequency and decibels. The peace of autumn on a clear day, the quiet of classrooms, the solitude of parks, the sleep of babies, the purr of a city at work – all were innocent prey for the shrill bullhorn.
The sound truck had become an aggravation. A week or two of this was about all we could stand. The truck excited a normal human resentment against the whole principle of free speech. The rolling bullhorn, which was not free speech but amplified speech, was declared a nuisance in most places and banned. The common noise ordinance set a difference between plain speaking and loud speaking.
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The theme of amplification lives strong as ever. Through technology, the sound truck is reincarnated as Twitter-X and the cable TV show. They are today’s public nuisance, the sharp elbows of political advertisements. They are the sound truck reincarnate, bringing us to the same familiar disturbance and the same shattered peace. They excite in us a contempt that we had once reserved for ads about erectile dysfunction. (And they bring a longing for old-fashioned journalism, its reality, its contrast with fiction.)
A lot of people these days are eager to throttle opinions they don’t admire. If they happens to ride hot on a volume of sound that is as insufferable as the message itself, the number of people who want to stifle both the sound and the idea are bound to increase.
The technology may change but the campaign season is upon us with its venom, its loud speech and long reach, ever amplifying the difference between ideas and noise.
