No News

It's a Friday. Like hospitals, nothing notable happens on Fridays and the Weekends because doctors and news people don't want it to happen. It certainly seems true today. After reading various news sources, it has become abundantly clear that there is no new news. Boring, boring, boring, boring.

Let's see, Maryland, and all people except the millions of consumers who shop there, hates Wal-Mart. Snooze.

Alito will get confirmed but the Democrats will harrumph about it. They make me tired.

Most movies stink. Critics being paid to be critical.

The weather is unpredictable. Ha! Try telling weathermen that.

GM will survive by cutting 4 Billion in overhead, but just barely. Last week, Business Week said they were doomed. What changed?

The Donner party didn't eat each other after all. Well, isn't this just a fine how-do-you-do?

What is so not surprising or newsworthy? Almost every extreme news story you hear--secret conspiracies (Kennedy's death), murder and mayhem and millions dead(New Orleans), stolen elections (2000, 2004), their alive! (miner's deaths), bird flew pandemic (if we're lucky, it could happen next year--wouldn't that be like sooooo exciting for news people?), Bush is Satan incarnate, Angelina is pregnant--is FALSE, except for that last one.

The truth is, people are boring and predictable. Most people are decent and trying to do their best--the New Orleans citizens were notable for not going cuckoo (most of them anyway), the miners showed love and kindness to each other and their families as they each slipped away, people the world over benefitted from charitable neighbors they didn't know cared.

Even the love-to-hate-him George Bush may be short-sighted or hard-headed or whatever you want to ascribe to him, but it is a tough sell saying that he is trying to damage our country or wants us to fail or secretly doesn't care if we're attacked--he's just in it for the oil companies--come on.

And the Angelina-Brad Pitt story is so moldy old and predictable. A scoundrel husband messes around on a wife he was already tired of but just didn't have the guts to extricate himself from until he got (in his pea-sized mind) a better offer. That happens every day people. We have many families, unfortunately, split at the seams by one or both selfish parties. While excruciating for everyone involved and unquestionably destructive, it has happened since the beginning of people. That these narcissists get any breathless press just fuels the beast. What if no one published a picture of them--let them wither. By the way, you know they will have the ugliest kid ever. Poor Nell Newman daughter of the beautiful Paul and Joanne Woodward. Homely as a hedge fence, that girl and with the genes she has you'd think she'd come out looking goddess-like. Don't hold your breath for the little Pitt.

People are boring and simple and base and dull and often more kind and generous than thought possible. Underneath, we expect this. In fact, these newstories are news because they seem extraordinary and then we're disappointed when even these people are mundane--the same as us.

The true stories, the reallly scary ones we like to ignore. A good book about this is Fear Less by Gavin De Becker a risk consultant for people in corporations and the government. (Buy it used--I got it for $1 at the Dollar Tree.) If you would really like to know what to worry about and relax about the rest, read this. Or, twiddle your fingers about most of the nonsense that makes news.