Maybe it’s terminal ennui, but the news really bores me
anymore.
I’m normally a news junkie. Yet the news now always seems to
be the same. It’s simply not that interesting. Perhaps I’ve reached the point
of diminishing astonishment.
Between never ending protests by the clueless, the Clinton
e-mail fiasco, Trump saying stupid stuff, Cruz’ packaged responses, and Obama
taking his family on yet another taxpayer-funded junket, it all feels like I’m
watching reruns. Every day seems like
Groundhog Day.
Occasionally there’s yet another atrocity committed by one lunatic
Muslim or another; some mass murder of innocents perpetrated in the name of
Allah. Then there’s the mass murder of logic and reason by our politicians in
both parties in the name of demonizing each other.
Meanwhile, nothing in the Middle East or in Washington ever
changes. The warring tribes in both places will always be at war for reasons
lost in the distant past. Their constant warfare will produce nothing of value,
will fix nothing, and will resolve nothing.
And they will continue to blame each other for that.
Here in the United States, the stock market will go up and
down. Oil prices will go up and down. And
prices for everything else – food, clothing, prescription drugs, college
tuition, whatever – will always go up. It makes no difference who is in control
of the House, the Senate, or the Oval Office; all these things are as
predictable as the sun’s rising every day.
The same holds for the weather and natural disasters. There
will be wildfires somewhere, torrential rain and floods elsewhere, droughts in
other areas, record high or low temperatures in parts of the north, south, east,
or west, and a tornado that hits a church or trailer park.
That’s just here. In
other parts of the world there will be devastating earthquakes and tsunamis,
which makes what’s happening here seem not so bad.
The media will cover all of the above as if it’s something
brand new.
Far-flung correspondents will breathlessly report on the
latest massacres around the globe. Retired military guys will state what they
would do if they were still in uniform – which they aren’t. Political hacks
from previous administrations will support the party line. Larry Sabato, Karl
Rove, and Frank Lund will prognosticate before waffling with an “it remains to
be seen” qualifier.
News anchors with no more grasp of economics than a
high-school senior will report on the “jobs picture,” the Fed’s monetary policy,
and the rise and fall of the stock market and oil prices, as if they understand
what they’re saying – which they don’t.
There will be the usual hard-luck story – a single mother of
five with some disease she can’t afford to treat, the man unable to find a job
because of a murder conviction in his past, the child born with no heart or
three legs, or some such – designed to tug at our heartstrings, but really to
make us all feel better about our own lot in life.
None of it’s new.
None of it, by definition therefore, is “news.”
Years ago another writer and I competed to create the best
headline for one of the supermarket rags – the goal being to come up with
something irresistible to their readers.
He won with “Elvis returns from the dead aboard UFO with
miracle diet that cures cancer.”
Tell me that’s not more interesting than “Obama to release
more prisoners from Gitmo.”
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