Otterblog

Yesterday, I did my civic duty and answered the call for jury duty. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Right in the middle of spring break. But what are you going to do? Everybody I told I was doing this said essentially the same thing? They’d let you be on a jury? I tried not to take that as an insult on my impartiality/intellect/independence. The conventional wisdom is that journalists never get picked for juries. Lots of reasons/speculation: We’re anti-authority. We don’t believe what anybody says. We know too many lawyers. We’ve written about the plaintiffs/defense/prosecutors etc. Take your pick. But times have changed. I know several journalists who have been picked to serve on juries in recent years. My guess is it’s a function of several things. First, that the jury pool is more shallow than we care to admit. Second, a realization that we’re good at sifting through complicated matters and rendering fair decisions.

Now, civic duty takes many forms. For me, it was this. Sitting in a room about as cold as a meat locker for seven hours reading magazines and doing some work. In the background, reruns of Sanford and Son and the Jeffersons. Sort of an interesting dynamic there. The TV was off for the first 90 minutes. Then somebody turned it on. At first, it was a big annoyance, but slowly our group’s attention turned to the rantings of George and Louise, Fred and LaMonte. Even the most hard-boiled of us was laughing by the end of it all. And so, if most of us didn’t get to serve on a jury, I’d like to think there was a little bit of bonding and good will formed through the day that will carry over into our daily lives. That and the $12.