A Modest Proposal For January 2014

Soooo…. the news.  The NEWS?  The gnu’s? The newz?

I am reasonably well read.  I take the St. Louis Post Dispatch out of sympathy and sense of obligation.  I read the Wall Street Journal Every Day.  I get the New Yorker Weekly.  I listen to NPR almost incessantly in my car and in a vain effort to understand my brother I listen Glenn Beck several hours a week.  I watch “Meet The Press” every Sunday and follow it up with Fox’s weekly news show.  Sometimes I scramble home from work to watch the national news at 5:30.  Historically, I try and stay away from the freestanding silos of cable news but there was a dark period during the last election where I would watch FOX or MSNBC as I got dressed but that was too depressing on all counts.  The point is, historically, I  like the news.

But that seems to be changing.  I really enjoy the local NPR station, The provide a lot of news and although they are not “Fair and Balanced” they provide different voices and often illustrate that there are two sides to issues and that some have “nuances’. I do not find them particularly liberal but understand myself well enough to realize I have become indoctrinated.  I generally believe that:

1.  Everyone should have health care

2.  Immigration, even illegal immigration has made our country great and we need to let this latest group of criminals in.

3.  Government holds the potential of improving peoples lives in some limited situations.

4.  I do not believe that corporations have constitutional rights or that the founders intended same.

5.  I do not believe that money is “speech” or that the founders intended same.

6.  I think I live in the greatest country in the world at the best possible time to be alive.

7.  I think my children’s future and the countries future is what we, and they make it.

So I guess that makes me a pinko but as I said, I have some awareness of my socialist/communist/progressive/Christian leanings.  The Post Dispatch I am told is a liberal publication but I just think of it as a shitty publication.  Their own editorials are all liberal, some stupidly so but they publish Krautheimer and George Will and David Brooks as well as the liberal columnists.  Almost every day they publish a letter from a reader  going off on the President so, they try and show some other sides but more than anything, it is just a bad paper with a lot of Associated Press stories, no analysis and trivial local coverage.  As I have stated in the past…”you can wrap fish in it.”

The Wall Street Journal is awesome for international coverage and runs a steady drumbeat of “the colored boy is ruining the country” in it’s domestic reporting and editorials.  But I like it as far as providing a more intellectual right wing point of view as well as the best international coverage.  Better than the Times.  I do not agree with their editorial page much but it is well  written and often well argued.  I believe that The Hoover Institution at Stanford exists solely for the purpose of turning out Wall Street Journal Editorial page fodder.  But I like it.  It challenges me.  This is good.  Rupert Murdoch and Fox own the Journal but it still has a modicum of journalistic integrity. Murdoch's ownership and his influence has compromised that as any owners politically leaning effect the editors who have their paychecks signed by them.  I can live with that.

Fox is less than useless.  A drum beat of pretty and angry woman and spluttering, overcompensating, self important, effeminate, angry men.  They are fair and balanced like a lynch mob and their “We Report, You Decide” along with “Fair and Balanced” provide the best example of Orwellian NewSpeak, other than “The Affordable Care Act” and “Operation Freedom”.

Glenn Beck is a demagogue and an entertainer who makes money by making people frightened.  I guess in a free country that is acceptable but as a Christian American I abhor the politics of fear that he spreads.  It is not a source of news and his “Blaze” web site and TV channel are more than shameful but… it is a free country.  The “fat man on the radio” Rush Limbaugh is no different.  They set up false narratives that support their agendas but never be confused, their agenda is to make money by feeding the people in their silo.  A false narrative is something along the lines of citing a school in Omaha sending a kid home for waving around a picture of a gun as evidence of the FACT that America has become irrationally intolerant of guns and violence.  

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/04/18/the-power-of-false-narratives/

But lately I have been suffering fatigue.  It has been building since 2008 but the 2012 election capped it and since then it has been once again a steady drumbeat and it is starting to fill me with anxiety… and a little dread.

Obamacare

Debt Crisis

Shut Down

Sustainable Energy

Iraq

Benghazi

Nuclear Option

North Korea

Climate Change (go ahead and argue it’s made up...I dare you)

The next debt ceiling increase

Fill in the blank

_____________________________

Everything is a pile of shit.  Government has failed, the Fed has failed, big banks have failed, “Mainstream Media”...FAILED, FOX...failed, our schools have failed, curtailing gun violence, FAILED, Mid Eastern Policy, FAILED… it goes on and on with everyone attacking everyone else and no one listening or working with anyone who disagrees with them because listening and compromise are SIGNS OF WEAKNESS! The idea that all of these problems are complex and do not allow simple solutions are an anathema to the way all these media/news/entertainers make their livings.  

It is starting to make me mentally ill and all who know me would say MORE mentally ill and no one needs that.  It literally makes me jittery to turn on NPR and when I switch over to FOX it is worse.  Everyone is so earnest and so genuine and everything is not just a disaster for me and my family but is a disaster for our grandchildren AND OUR IMMORTAL SOULS!  

Really?  Can anything be that important?  More to the point, is EVERYTHING so important?  Can EVERYTHING be threatening our democracy, our environment, our morals and of course OUR CHILDREN!?!?  The answer is obvious and the answer is no.  I like being informed but these guys have screwed the pooch.  I am a Christian.  My hope is for the future and my faith is in God and his plan.  I cannot continue to be thrashed by this litany of “EVERYTHING IS HOPELESS AND WE NEED TO BUY GOLD, STORE FOOD AND BUY GUNS”!  It seems wrong to me but it also seems wrong to rail against the people who believe this.  There a time when we just ignored crazy people in our country.  Now we elect them, give them microphones and we read their blogs and often give them money.

I am not going to create the answer but as a news junky I am going to try 30 days without news.  No Post, No Wall Street Journal, Music in my car and perhaps some time alone with the Bible on Sunday mornings before church.  Maybe some books on tape or TED talks or something...anything.  I do not know if I can do this.  Also, if there is news on in my vicinity I will try not to listen.  I will be happy to discuss things with people who are tuned in but I really am going to try to read some of the books that have stacked up on my shelf and spend a little bit more time in contemplation. It is going to take some planning and I am inviting you to do the same thing.  Opt out.  30 days.  We can encourage one another if you're brave enough.  Let’s reclaim our anxiety and breathe deeply and avoid these earnest, well intentioned new sources predicting our doom. Just for a month.  Unless it feels too good to stop.  If you are of a mind join me.  

I would like to say, “See you in the funny papers” but I think I am going to duck those too.

Peace.

We Could Wrap Fish In It?

Sooooo.... perhaps it is time to rant a little about the Past Dispatch. As a connoisseur of Diners there is very much truth to the fact that is a breakfast at a diner is likely only as good as the paper you are reading. Based on this it is my unfortunate duty to predict that within the year every St. Louis diner will be forced to close because everyone in the city will have ceased eating breakfast because our once humble paper has become a useless, unreadable, insubstantial piece of offal (look it up Davidson).
The Post (and to be fair most daily newspapers) has been on the slide for years. The idea that conglomerates should own these bastions of first amendment rights was a bad one to start with but for a long time they were money makers. When the big boys bought you they engineered efficiencies. Efficiencies started with consolidated editorial staff. They continued with slimmed down reporting staffs (lets do more with less people). They continued to more pool reporting. More letting A.P. have the whole story.

Then add revenue dove even more. These conglomerates had purchased these papers with a ton of leveraged debt. At that point, nothing else could happen. They started filing bankruptcy (both Chicago papers and many more) and then dramatically slashing costs by firing more people and screwing their delivery service to make the paper even less reliable. This was true for Mc Clatchy who came out of Iowa and with a small town savvy bought a bunch of daily’s which serviced the debt for a while until add revenue dropped and they are now getting slaughtered. Over the last year their stock has gone from about 11 bucks a share to slightly south of 60 cents.

This dramatic drop in share price is due to the fact that their business model is dead. This has led to desperation. The post has been cutting back for years and a lot of people have given up on it but I have held on bravely. Now getting the Post each day is similar to going to the nursing home to visit your grandma with Alzheimer's. You love her and the memories you had of her and you owe her visits at least out of respect but seeing her like this....well,.... it breaks your heart. The Post’s most recent offense was a “revamping” of the paper to make it “better”. This included cutting whole sections and reducing the broadsheet size a couple of inches so it is now a pamphlet edition”.

We could go on for days discussing the reasons for this but they include, over leverage, legacy families like the Pulitzers cashing out (which was brilliant by the way), and of course....THE INTERNET!. The total lack of imagination for all these newspapers to not be able to charge anything for their content on line is mind boggling and their inability to figure out how to make money on the net doomed the print newspapers too. Very sad. I am going to miss newspapers. I will miss the Post but it is a foregone conclusion that it will cease to exist and when it goes it will have diminished so much as to not be missed.
I will miss the old Post. The USA today and The Wall Street Journal will be survive for a while along with the New York Times and Maybe the L.A. Times. Perhaps they will figure out a way to come up with meaningful local editions.

I hope so. I cannot eat breakfast without a paper.