Galvin crop

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”

When, however, has Maurice Switzer’s sage warning* — which appeared in his 1907 offering, “Mrs. Goose, Her Book” — ever prevented anyone from flapping their yap and exposing their shortcomings?

(Around here, we hold that truth to be self-evident. Proudly.)

Switzer, it must be said, was long-gone before the Information Superhighway was even a glimmer; but his words to the wise now seem Nostradamic in the age of posting, tweeting, blasting, hash-tagging, TikTok-talking, and whatever new verbiage has been coined in the past 20 minutes.

This came to mind recently when I was strolling through the offerings that we at the RVT had shared with readers across Facebook and saw that one story in particular had elicited a nimiety of responses — some reasonable, some debatable and some that would prove Maurice Switzer knew of which Mrs. Goose spoke.

The story in question discussed the 734 apartment units expected to be constructed across Medford by the end of the year. Housing, in Jackson County and throughout Oregon, has been made a priority by political and civic leaders from Gov. Tina Kotek on down, and the capital investment of $41,125,772 in the seven new Medford complexes is a massive leap from such construction in recent years.

When the story reached our social media outlets, it became the latest flashpoint in the seemingly never-ending race to see whose opposable thumbs should be equipped with training wheels.

On Facebook alone, there are nearly 500 “likes” while the report has been shared at least 70 times. The comments, however — which at deadline had reached a decidedly unmellow 420 — revealed, as you might expect, more about those posting than about the additional 734 residences.

Legitimate questions were raised … particularly when readers questioned whether talk of $1,200 a month and a target customer base for some complexes of $39,388.20 to $53,317.60 could really be considered affordable to lower-income households and others who most need housing.

But, after that, well, in the immortal words of Phoebe Buffay … “My eyes! My eyes!”

Beyond the usual smorgasbord of sarcasm and pessimism were comments that made you wonder why some keyboard warriors chose to spew such anger in response to relatively tame story about new construction.

Comments quickly shifted to whether the complexes would be trashed by the low-income families that move in; whether these new apartments would see an influx of the homeless; whether units would be rented to “illegals”; and whether this new construction was simply a money-grab by developers.

Discussion deteriorated to the point where arguments erupted over whether too much or not enough has been done for those who lost their homes in the 2020 Labor Day fires — along with the expected “if you don’t like it … leave” contretemps.

There’s a maxim regarding how to approach the offshoots of the Information Superhighway that really can’t be stressed enough: Sometimes, perhaps even most times, it’s best not to read the comments.

After wading through the muck, and being notified that some responses had been filtered out (we can only imagine what those said), I was convinced of two things:

A. My decision long ago never to engage in the socialmediasphere had been correct; and

2. I desperately needed a shower.