Views from the Levee

Interesting times…

There is a lot of stuff happening in our world that could be construed as bothersome to some or a simple after thought to others. Watching the news has sadly become increasingly pointless, outside of getting your local weather of course. The national news will tell you one thing while the cable news will tell you another. The advent of 24 hour cable news sounded like a great idea, but in reality, trying to fill the air 24 hours a day and keep an audience, it would seem and is proving to be tough. Perhaps the term beating a dead horse was created to describe CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, etc…It’s not so much that the events occurring today are any different from years past, the same ailments of today have existed since the dinosaurs were building the foundation of the Oil boom. For instance we are witnessing the re-emergence of ocean going pirates, nothing says 21st century like a pirate attack! Sure would have thought that with the proliferation of long range high powered machine guns and, oh I don’t know, radar, these implements would have pretty much rendered pirating obsolete, but obviously destroyers versus drift boats and mercury outboards is more even matched than one would assume. And pretty certain there were earthquakes and volcanoes back in the day as well, don’t think so? Ask the next Pompeian you meet, well never mind. What it comes down to is that it’s the way these stories are covered and re-covered and covered one last time for the insomniac or the night watchman who might have missed it at every top of the hour for the last 10 hours. It is shoved down our throats at every turn; we can’t help but think it’s just a matter of time before pirates start cruising the local lakes and rivers. They are selling fear. And the populous is buying it. Dooms-dayers are having a field day running around with that crap-tastic “I told you so” obnoxious swagger. And don’t think that the Politics and politicians are any different today then they were 50-1000 years ago either. Along with the brash dictators and power mongers who will always play a key role in history and present times of the world. Again it’s the way they are handled and portrayed. Don’t be misled, is Hugo Chavez a giant douche – yes, and Barry O getting into a book club with him probably wasn’t smart, but he did, we have all seen, read, and heard about it to no end. And the mousy guy from Iran, who rocks the Members Only jackets daily, how does he keep getting picked to give speeches to the world? I think his speech writer wrote one speech and then was fired or more likely be-headed, “Israel and the US are bad, Holocaust never happened…blah blah blah.” We’ve heard it before Ahmadidyourjob! Now scurry back to Tehran and see how many “scientists” you can poison trying to enrich uranium. I guess with his little hate speech he thinks like Jimmy Buffett does with “Margaritaville” when you think you’ve got a hit, keep playing it. But eventually it’s up to us as individuals to decide what is and what isn’t a big deal, and that will be different for everyone. Everybody is in different places in their respective lives and sees relevance in different things. Letting the news and the slant with which it is reported define you, would be a shame. Don’t let others make up your mind for you.

[EDT: 4/22: Disregard all of the above, the world IS INDEED coming to an end. Proof - when a female hating queen is asked to judge the Miss USA Pageant, and still would rather be a catcher!]

To stay with the theme of over-coverage and driven network agendas, let’s look at a few historical moments and the way in which modern media types might have reported them:

How do you think Anderson Cooper would have handled the assassination of Julius Caesar? Besides demanding to conduct all interviews with Brutus and the other accused Senators, in the Roman Baths
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Or Leslie Stahl on Women’s Suffrage, actually Leslie probably marched with them.

How about Rosie O’Donnell weighing in on the Irish Potato Famine, oh we could have only been so lucky as to have had Rosie “on location” for that one.

Or the great Chris Mathews handling the Charlie Manson murders.