Local Boy Writes Blog, World Astonished

I will be the first to admit that I don’t follow news and current world events as closely as I should. The main reason behind this is not that I don’t care, but that I have absolutely no faith in the media. Certainly there are important stories out there that I should be aware of, but to get to them I have to wade through an ocean of garbage and senseless prattle.

For fun I am going to explore CNN's website while I write this and comment on some of the stories I find. Under the “latest news” section there are of course several very worthwhile stories that the world should probably check out. However, mixed in with these real news stories are topics such as, “Lady Gaga dresses as a man?” and “Lindsay Lohan spotted post-rehab”. Is this seriously the kind of news CNN should be making known to the public? Do Americans really have nothing better to do than follow the bumbling mistakes and cries for attention of movie stars and music artists? If this is the reason you read the news, let me give you a preview of tomorrow: Some star is going to screw up! Do you know why? It’s because he/she is human like the rest of us. People make mistakes. Stars don’t make any more or less than the rest of the world, but because everyone knows who they are, they make the news. It may be fun to sit back and laugh at the mishaps of those in the limelight, but how many of their mistakes have also been made by you or someone you know? Do you need news of failures of people who don’t matter in the long run to make your day complete? Maybe you should just go look in the mirror.

Moving on, also on CNN’s website I see the article, “Intriguing: Ex-Bush official is gay”. Are you kidding me? There is so much wrong with that I don’t even know where to begin. First off, why is that intriguing? I would be intrigued if an ex-Bush official was a watermelon! Maybe not surprised, but intrigued to be sure. Every time I see a news report about someone being gay I lose a little more of the minuscule amount of respect I have for humanity as a whole. It is 2010. Is it not time to leave our bigotry behind? A friend of mine, Travis Anders, brought to light a very good point in an article he wrote a while back, there should be no gay rights, but only human rights. We are human beings no matter our race, religion, or sexual preference. This kind of smut should be out of the news by now. Yes, I call it smut, because to me it is obscene to continue making stories out of the fact that someone is gay. Even if the story is pro-gay, humanity should be above the need to continuously drag it to light. We don’t see stories about the ex-Bush official who just happened to be heterosexual after all.

Finally I want to comment on a news story related to the recent stabbing of a Muslim cab driver in New York City. I won’t go into the stabbing itself, the horror of which should be quite obvious. The title of the article I do want to talk about is, “Acquaintances ‘shocked’ at film student’s arrest in Muslim stabbing”. I see this type of thing in the news quite often. Everyone is always so surprised when someone commits an act of violence. Well, I would certainly hope they would be surprised! The day I start seeing news articles entitled, “Acquaintances say they saw it coming” will be a very sad day indeed. If these people had known their friend, family member, or neighbor was on the verge of inflicting harm on another person I certainly hope they would tell someone about it. I guess it’s a good sign that people still have a positive enough outlook on the world to think their friends incapable of evil, but does it really need to be a news story?

The preceding was simply my opinion. Everyone is free to agree or disagree as they see fit. I think it’s time for me to do something else, as the morning’s journey through the world’s news has left me feeling a little down. Maybe I’ll go watch some cartoons.