A Break for the News

As attachment to the world becomes ever more accessible, I have found myself rather uninterested in tapping into it, at least not diverting from what else I am doing instead.  It's not that I am uninformed.  Misinformed, perhaps, some would insist likely.  But snippets come my way passively, often from what FB friends or the Post-Dispatch display on FB or from the hourly news on the radio, either in the car or in my kitchen where it serves as background noise. As a college student I took to KYW-1060 all news all the time, largely as a novelty but also because that station offered the best clarity on my AM transistor radio.  As a commuter, I needed the traffic report so KYW became the center push button of my car radio, as it still is.  

More recently, as I retire and retreat daily to My Space for much of the day, actively seeking out events has become a low priority.  It's not as if I reject information.  Indeed, I pay for subscriptions to The Forward and to The Atlantic which offer mostly good analysis of events, or at least The Atlantic does. The Forward presents a Jewish slant on events or culture.  They have reader comments, no better or worse than any other public site, rarely read, though often contributed to. You could argue that my FB friends make comments on news items they post, though they reflect reaction more than analytical thought.  There is something to be said for having an editor take responsibility for what others can read.

What I have not done until this week has been to divert from what I was doing, typically writing, exploring subjects on You Tube, bantering with electronic friends, watching my favorite channels, or reading to access a dedicated news source.  I hadn't originally planned to this week either until I opened The Forward to see that, to my surprise, a Democrat had won one of the two runoff seats in Georgia and that the other was still in contention.  Close The Forward and transfer to cnn.com. Now we have not only engaging news but to me unexpected favorable news, particularly when the second Democrat held a lead that would give my preferred party control of both houses of Congress, something they botched in November when it appeared more likely.  I had to follow the returns.  

On the same day, the formal certification of electoral votes would take place.  No surprise on the outcome of the count and vote, irritation with the circus that would perform.  Protesters are a necessary part of the American fabric, also expected.  Like everyone else, I did not expect a siege of the Capitol Building.  Once it occurred, and the second Georgia election seemed more likely to convert the Senate majority, the analysis from the news sources started pouring in.  I had allotted the day to work on an upcoming presentation, now pre-empted by news and commentary.  I shuttled between a number of news organizations on my screen but did not access TV or radio at all.  Like many others, I thought formally removing the President from power by the 25th Amendment might be the best option though others favored impeachment or running out the calendar.  All defensible but with different consequences.  Will his repetitively toxic and now physically toxic rhetoric be diffused?  That's the next story I had to have, still diverting me from other tasks like working on that talk or getting papers cleared out of the living room.  But I stayed fixated on events as they played out.

They are still playing out a few days later but I am returning to My Space less engrossed in the various moments of news cycle.  I have been reading The Atlantic more, as the commentaries are all well-considered, The Forward less as the commentaries are more pedestrian, cnn.com hardly at all.  And I am making good progress with my Power Point slides for the upcoming presentation.