Serious News in the ‘Silly Season’

Germans have a name for this time of year, sauregurkenzeit, or “sour cucumber time.”

Spaniards know it as serpiente de verano, a “summer snake.”

In English, this is the “silly season.”

The term dates to England and a letter complaining about the Times of London newspaper, published on July 13, 1861, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art.

With Parliament in recess, the government would be on holiday, as would the leading journalists of the day. Without matters of state to report on, the newspaper featured lighter, less serious fare.

At least one reader disapproved: “In those months the great oracle becomes — what at other times it is not — simply silly. In spring and early summer, the Times is often violent, unfair, fallacious, inconsistent, intentionally unmeaning, even positively blundering, but it is very seldom merely silly.”

The month was named August in 8 BCE by the Roman Senate, to honor Emperor Augustas Caesar.

August could be excused for having an inferiority complex. July has the Fourth of July and September has Labor Day. August has nothing of similar stature. With apologies to the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, August “don’t get no respect.”

Labor Day used to draw a line between the end of summer vacation and a return to school.

As recently as the 1980s, that was true for most public schools. Today, some 70 percent return before Labor Day and that rises to nearly 100 percent in the South and West, according to Education Week. Metro Atlanta districts begin classes in the first week of August. Students already have returned in some exurban and rural districts.

William Powers wrote five years ago in The Atlantic magazine: “There’s something quaint about the notion that every August, the news just packs up and goes away. Though we’re no longer an agrarian society, it’s nice to think we still honor the ancient rhythms of the seasons.”

When I was a pup in this business, older hands would mutter that nothing of consequence happens in August. That, of course, was a myth.

In my professional lifetime, during August:
1978: President Jimmy Carter declared a federal health emergency at Love Canal in New York after toxic waste leaked in a residential community, the first such declaration of a non-natural disaster.
1981: MTV launched, changing the music industry.
1990: Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and President George W. Bush ordered “Operation Desert Shield,” a massive buildup of U.S. and allied military in the region.
1998: President Bill Clinton became the first sitting president to testify before a grand jury, questioned about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
2000: Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore selected Sen. Joe Lieberman as his vice-presidential running mate, making Lieberman the first Jewish American on a major party ticket.
2005: Hurricane Katrina made landfall near the Louisiana-Mississippi border, devastating Gulf Coast communities and flooding New Orleans.

So, what might we expect this August?

Rabbis will write their High Holy Days sermons (Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on Sept. 11).

A tropical storm or hurricane named Cristobal, Dolly, or Edouard — the next three on the National Hurricane Center’s alphabetical list —- will threaten a shoreline.

Large numbers of Georgians will obsess over college football, moving some to bark like dogs in public. By the way, the “dog days of August” refers to the summer heat, not the team representing the state’s flagship university.

Georgia counties will begin mailing property tax bills, followed by property owners complaining about those bills.

The U.S. will remain at war with Iran. The price of oil will remain volatile. The price of products made from petroleum or transported using a derivative of petroleum will remain volatile.

There was a time when the conventional wisdom held that Americans would not pay attention to election campaigns until after Labor Day. Those days are long gone.

In the run-up to the midterm elections, national political reporters will become part-time residents, as a spotlight again shines on Georgia, particularly the U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Mike Collins.

Candidates and political action committees have raised tens of millions of dollars for this and other Georgia races and will appeal for millions more. Georgians will gripe about the unceasing political advertising on television, radio, and streaming platforms, but those outlets will rejoice as their cash registers ring with campaign spending.

You can add “Israel” to your election campaign bingo cards, along with “affordability” and “pocketbook issues” (or its cousin, “kitchen table issues”).

American support for Israel will be an issue around the country, particularly when U.S. House and Senate, and some gubernatorial, candidates debate.

Speaking of volatile politics, Israel’s Oct. 27 election will select the next 120-seat Knesset. The results will determine which party forms a majority coalition in the parliament and, as such, whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in the office he has held for 19 of the last 30 years.

August may include National Ice Cream Sandwich Day and National Tooth Fairy Day, but there’s no shortage of serious news.

So much for what the French call la torte-saison, a “dead, dull season.”