Let's Hit the Brakes on Our "Fast-Paced" World

I just got done doing an interview with Jeanine Pirro - a former district attorney and County Court Judge of Westchester County, New York - who will be the star of Judge Jeanine Pirro.

She'll oversee daily court battles from 3:00-4:00pm on WYCW, your CW in the Carolinas.

While going over some of the press material provided comes this description of her show: "Judge Jeanine Pirro is a fast-paced one-hour daily court program.."

For years, Pete Yanity and I have enjoyed an ongoing fondness for the vastly overused term fast-paced to describe everything from TV shows to football offenses.

Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden was quoted by scout.com on Sunday in reference to S.C. State coming to Death Valley this weekend with "fast-paced, multiple looks both defensively and offensively...the fast-paced looks that we'll see through the course of the game.."

A quick Google News search of the term fast-paced brought these uses of the overused term:

"The pace ...," (the coach) added. "Wow. It was a well-played, fast-paced (high school volleyball) match."

"Northville's Tipping Point 'I Love You' production fast-paced fun" describing a local theatre production

"Fast-paced college life leaves little room to work it out" from the Murray State News

And I never thought I'd see it associated with board games, "Linear Backgammon: Innovative, Exciting, and Fast-paced"

Why is everyone in such a hurry?

We're even in a hurry in this profession. Kiku Adatto of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at Harvard University released this information about the people you see on the news each night:

"Adatto found that during the 1968 presidential race between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, the average length of the candidates' statements on the evening network news was 42.3 seconds. Twenty years later, in 1988, the average length of presidential aspirants' sound bites had dwindled to 9.8 seconds. By mid-1992, the average sound bite aired by the evening network news had become a mere 7.3 seconds," as reported by The Washington Post.

Yes, I realize we live in a microwave society. We want news now. We get analysis now (note: I didn't say accurate analysis now). We want our fast food service lines to be fast-paced. We want our trip through airport security to be fast-paced.

Those of you in the dating world want an evening to get really, really fast-paced when you realize that date you were set up for must have been arranged as a prank.

But can't anything be slow-paced?

I want a quiet evening at home to be slow-paced. I don't mind 18 holes on the golf course being slow-paced.

Take this lesson for the day: life doesn't have a shot clock.

And if you want to hear a real Yanity/Cunningham rant, get us started on attacking defenses in football.