Newsworthlessness

I'll make this brief, as brief as a U.S. network news report on something newsworthy like free elections in Burma or the continued mass -cides taking place around the world (fratricide, sororicide, mariticide, country men-o-cide).

My Friday ritual is to sleep in until 6:45, make sure the cats have been slopped, hang out on Facebook for an hour or so then couch dive to watch U.S. network news.

News. Noun. According to Webster's dictionary I can't say because my Internet connection is slow this morning, and I have to pee, so I can't wait--but I can hold it long enough to rant.

Lead story? Not Aung San Suu Ki's freedom to leave her house and openly campaign which is newsworthy I feel because she is not only a Nobel Peace Prized laurette who has been under house arrest for fifteen years, but because changes in Burma may affect not only Southeast Asia but some countries nearby that we might give a shit about. 

No mention about the upcoming UN rights council vote that may reignite the Sri Lankan civil war--which nobody but Sri Lankans give a shit about but was long and bloody and apparently it ain't over yet. 

Not even the vigilante mobs whose memes call for lynching vigilante George Zimmerman came up.

Lead story: The California lottery

Followed by a story on autism in America. Autism is a serious issue, no argument there. But is another report on socially withdrawn, non-verbal (what we used to call retarded) children newsworthy? No, not in my opinion, not even when the report ends but the story continues in the newsroom when the anchor welcomes a delicious thirty something female doctor to voice her views; not even if wardrobe did slip her into a tight blouse with a plunging neckline did I find the story thought provoking. 

"Thank you doctor for your comments and by the way, nice rack."

Followed by a rising gas price story as America closes in on five bucks a gallon, which in Europe would be considered a reason for frenzied, hysterical long lines at the gas pumps before prices return to 7 or 8 bucks a gallon.

Bullying report. A short film called "Bully". I know I saw this report last week almost word for word except last week there was a Meryl Streep cameo. This week we heard from children who watched the film with a news reporter and when asked, "Is bullying a problem?" answered "Yes. Yes it is."

Next up, after a commercial about a stomach ulcer medication that was more warnings why you should NOT take the medication than reasons you SHOULD take the medication, a short clip of George Zimmerman, arrested, handcuffed and not a scratch on him shown just in case the meme is resurrected on Facebook . In the report, a neighbor of Zimmerman, a hot black woman whose wardrobe choice included a pair of what we used to call "hot pants"--and before I could take my eyes of her sweet long legs, the segment on whatever she had to say was over.

Between the delicious doctor and whatever she had to say about retarded kids, which I wasn't listening to because there was a whisper of cleavage (very distracting) and Zimmerman's leggy neighbor in short shorts, I began to think, U.S. network news, for all of its faults, knows how to pick and choose eye candy.

And a nice clip of Earl Scruggs describing his thumb and three fingered banjo plucking technique. Scruggs? He passed away and I am saddened by this but I wish I could live long enough to hear that the word "iconic" has gone the way of "broads, "groovy" and "awesome" (OK, awesome hasn't been retired but we're maybe a generation away from its death knell).

Finally tonight, our person of the week--(Jesus no, please please please don't let them say it) "Someone making a difference".

And who's making a difference? A physically impaired combat veteran who now works with (wait for it). . .autistic children. 

Not a word about the debate on US health care and its future now being debated and discussed among Supreme Court justices. I only heard about that on the Daily Show. 

Syria? where a U.N human rights group released a report about how Bassar Al Assad's forces are targeting and torturing children--some of whom may be autistic and odds are some of them are. Drop the dead donkey.

Following the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news, came the Jim Lehrer News Hour which GOP candidates have long gone on the stump to cut funding for because it and other PBS shows are left leaning and partisan when reporting on both sides of an issue with a paneled discussion of professors and world leaders, and is a news show which does not have plunging neck lines nor a black women whose  legs are longer than a line at the DMV strategically placed to rivet you to your seat for 30 minutes.

I have to pee.

???

I don't know how the universe began. There is a plausible theory about subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light suddenly colliding and that the collision led to the formation of elemental gasses like hydrogen and helium which rapidly expanded to become the source of all things.

I don't know how life began. Something about a primordial soup and the evolution of single celled organisms.

I  have no clue why there are rewarding and retaliatory forces in a disinterested, supernatural world which lies beyond our senses, nor do I know why these forces so often remunerates us with miracles or reprimands us with great catastrophe when we so often don’t deserve either. 

I can't answer who or what or why or how all things were set into motion.

Why is it so many people since there have been people bundle all these unknown things together and write it all off with a single word--God--then merrily go on their way, fearing it, loving it, praying to it. I am happy for these people because they believe they do know and their happiness is heart warming.  They have faith but can sometimes be irritating when they condescend to those who don't have faith by either heaping great sympathy upon us who lack their faith or they can be dangerous when they make a decision to blow themselves up, taking as many people with them as they possibly can simply because others lack their brand of faith.
 

And I can't for the life of me figure out why people would call  Elton John or Bon Jovi rock and roll.

I also am greatly stumped when people curse on social networking sites, deleting certain letters substituting those letters with signs and symbols like # or * or @ as in  f#ck or sh*t or b@tch when on the receiving end of the message, their audience reads and hears the words in their minds. Are they trying not to offend us? Is it similar as to why Hebrews will only go so far as spelling out the name of their God as YHWH? I find it more offensive that people won't openly express these words with all letters or why not forget about using the words altogether. They are obviously somewhat computer savvy, and they must know there is an online thesaurus.

I accept that I will never know the answers to so many questions I once believed would be slowly revealed to me overtime through aging and wisdom; from my first inhalation to my final exhalation there are things which will always remain a mystery to me.
 

Fucking bugs the shit out of me sometimes.