"Sit Down and Read. Educate Yourself for the Coming Conflicts."
I was struck the other day by the sickening superficiality of television news programs. It seems worse than ever. As I was listening to a so-called expert "discuss" an issue, I was overcome with a desire for some in-depth information, not just a skimming of the surface by a partisan representative.
Surely not everyone is blatantly partisan, are they? There have to be some well-informed persons out there who are capable of discussing such complicated problems as the current economic crisis in a non-politicized way that would actually be informative and objective. Even a hardcore Democrat such as myself would like to hear things talked about in a spin-free way.
I guess it's a symptom of our times. Few people seem to care to invest the time and energy it takes to fully study or investigate something. We all just want to be fed a few sound bites and have our minds made up for us so that we can move on to other more important things. We are an ADD culture of extreme proportions. Even what I do here is adding to society's life-in-bite-sized-pieces mentality. Mp3s are the sound bites of albums.
Maybe what I should do for the rest of the campaign season is only watch C-SPAN and listen to public radio and read some intelligent newspapers and magazines. At least I would stand a slightly better chance of being fed some substantive information from those outlets as opposed to the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world (you may notice I'm not including FOX as an actual news source). I need to search out some serious policy wonks and spend the rest of my valuable time educating myself for the coming conflicts.
Flunk--"Sit Down" mp3 off Personal Stereo (buy)
Modest Mouse--"Education" mp3 off We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (buy)
On the lighter side, you must listen to this short bit that aired on NPR the other day about Joe the Plumber's new TV show. Too funny.
picture of Mother Jones from here
I think that part of the problem with th entertainment news media (CNN,
MSNBC, etc.) is their obsession with showing "both sides" of the issues.
Some issues don't have two sides, some issues have three sides or four or
73. The "fair and balanced" era of media is designed to polarize rather
than inform.
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