Listening Post: It’s no context!

One of the problems with social media is that it is a great vehicle for sharing content like photos and videos, headlines and short quotes, personal and/or rude remarks, etc., but it falls a little short sometimes in providing context. A case in point is this photo shared by Jonathan Brown on the new NCPR Tumblr page. It comes from Peter Sagal, host of the NPR news quiz program, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!”

A person might wonder just why the world-renowned cellist, Yo Yo Ma, impeccably turned out as always in a dark suit, is lying on a bathroom floor looking at a wombat. It’s a natural question. And the Tumblr entry provides no explanation. I tried a little research. There was lots of talk about the photo in Sagal’s Twitter feed, but mostly about how it had gone viral and how it was co-opted without attribution by a New York-area paper, much to Sagal’s (and, he alleges, the wombat’s) chagrin. So when Jonathan shared the photo again on the NCPR Facebook page, I felt it was incumbent upon me to provide some kind of explanation, even a hypothetical one. Here goes:

Yo Yo Ma and a wombat walk into a bar. Yo Yo says to the bartender, “I’ll have whatever my friend is having.” The bartender says, “He’s a freakin’ wombat!” Yo Yo says, “No, no–he’s just having a bad day.” The bartender says “Okey-doke–two Bad Days, comin’ up.” The wombat says, “Wait a minute; just what do you put in a Bad Day?” The bartender says, “I can’t remember; I’ll have to look it up. But the last guy that ordered one woke up on the bathroom floor with a cellist.”

Feel free to share any other inexplicable things that have shown up in your electronic neighborhood in a comment below. I’ll do my best to put the matter in context.

Tags: listeningpost