Dirty Laundry

--Charlie Brooker on How to Report the News

Packaged hysteria 
--A Murder of Quality, John Le Carre

We can do the innuendo 
we can dance and sing
When all is said and done 
 we haven't told you a thing 
--Dirty Laundry, Don Henley
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Lisa has not watched a local or national news program in many years, having figured out that a commensurate amount of time spent with a worthwhile publication will render a faster and fuller data stream. However, she has taken in a couple of newscasts at a friend's house in the past week and was embarrassed by what passed as news.

The agenda is clear out of the starting gate: The three major stories to be covered are shadowed. They are presented so as to elicit basic emotions like anger, sadness, frustration or outrage; their will be a barely veiled relationship among them. The broadcast will conclude with an "Aw-gee" story -- a guy who's been toting Starbucks coffee to the cancer ward for a decade, or a dedicated canine. It is like Greek tragedy, and the viewer is left with the cathartic experience after having been run through the emotional thresher in the span of a half hour.

For those who gain their primary input thusly, it is a terrible skewed and limited view of life. In addition, what is the effect of having one's emotions so fully jerked around as pertains to their own lives and those of their fellows? It feels exhausting, and yet no works has actually been done.

We have addressed elsewhere the ET! effect and the (John) Tessification of America. While it is admirable that many continue trying to stay updated via this medium, surely it is futility.

What do you think keeps viewers watching?

First Things First

Bless the beasts and the children
for in this world they have no voice
--Bless the Beasts and the Children,
The Carpenters
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USA Today is always good for a glimpse into what the average American finds interesting.

Yesterday front and center it was pirates -- always a good topic (Killings Escalate Piracy Crisis). It seems two wealthy people and two friends were killed aboard their 65-foot custom made sloop by pirates as they blithely navigated through known treacherous territory as they romped their way across the world enjoying fair seas and spreading the word of their Christian God via distribution of bibles and occasional sermons.

Meanwhile, buried at the bottom of Page 5D was the story, "Children are Coming to School Hungry", about kids who, well, waited out the clock til lunch when they could fill their empty bellies. Said Stacey Frakes who taught middle school in Madison Co., Florida (neighboring county to Tallahassee), hungry children would lay their heads on their tables and "almost cry":

She says hungry students "couldn't focus at all. All they could think about was wanting food. They would ask, 'What time is lunch? Is it lunchtime yet?' "

It's hard to teach children when "they are thinking about their next good meal," Frakes says.

Pages 5A and 7A had something about the protests in Cairo and Libya, as that becomes background or foreground chatter like the U.S. wars, as sensational news like pirates dwindles or arises.

I don't know about you, but my concern is how to fix the manifold problems in my country. Proselytizing globetrotters don't mean a whit to me; if they volunteered at home to ameliorate some actual problem I'd give them a nod, but not for going out out converting and cavorting. The political goings on elsewhere are also not primary to my well-being, as they are not for most people.

Ah, but pirates, matey -- now there's something to fill a lunch hour's chatter. Exotic and much more interesting than the grotty little tales of woe of our downtrodden. Except when you realize that the pirates were once the grotty little hungry downtrodden of their own countries.

There is a repetition here.