Tuning Out En Masse

As I posted yesterday, I've had to give myself a rest from the outside world this week as some personal issues as well as work took top priorities. That's when I realized that despite all of the personal angst, I was actually feeling better not paying too much attention to daily events. Yes, I knew there had been a shooting at the Holocaust Museum, and I understood what was at stake in the elections in Iran (actually posted on it last weekend before my "news fast" began), and I did see two episodes of Stephen Colbert in Iraq, which made me laugh and warmed my heart, but that was about it.

Here is my suggestion: let's stop watching television news altogether. I don't care what station. Our cable company just took MSNBC off basic cable service, so we lost it unless we use the cable box; digital won't allow the signal in unaided even with a brand new television. Lately Rachel and Keith have begun to sound as shrill as Glenn and Bill, so frankly, I stopped watching them. And some of their segments belonged on The Daily Show and not on a legitimate news show. I've never liked CNN, have only tuned to Fox News when I wanted to get angry, and am not around for The News Hour on PBS.

If we stopped watching, en masse, then perhaps as a country we would allow this extraordinarily gifted president to try to undo the damage done by greed and cleverness, exacerbated by deregulation and cronyism. Maybe he would stop trying to be so centrist and really put his head together with the best and the brightest and solve the real emergencies facing us: carbon emissions, health care, an unsustainable economy, and wars in countries we don't understand.

Maybe we would stop throwing names at each other and begin to listen a bit more.

We can't just label as "racist," "communist," or now "reverse racist" anyone with whom we disagree. And we can't forget that folks like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann are working for "entertainment-news" organizations that crave ratings, because higher ratings mean more advertising revenues.

Public interest isn't in their vocabulary.

So here is my suggestion: turn off the radio and television, and walk around your local community. Have a cup of coffee and begin a conversation with a neighbor. See what we can agree on, and maybe we can end the shrillness, isolate the extremes, and save the planet before it goes the way of Mars.

Take a look at both Paul Krugman and Frank Rich's columns.