Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. It was a bit touch and go these past few weeks; what with the attack of Daylight Savings Time. I woke up on that Monday morning hearing that I was 25% more likely to die from a heart attack. Just as my heart started to get over the shock, I had to dodge all of the sleepy drivers that were causing daylight savings Armageddon on the roads. Thankfully, I made it through the 99% chance of fender benders. Getting to work, I was depressed. This too was predicted with the 11% increase in depression caused by DST. Thankfully, it should pass within 10 weeks; when we will be well on the way to falling back and returning to the proper way of things. I found out all of these things via my local newspaper and other outlets that I peruse on my way to be an informed citizen.
In the mean time, I will continue to chase day break on my bike with 4 weeks of dawn and 1 week of a sliver of ole sol around my birthday in June. As I contemplated this man-made plague of locusts, I was struck by the messenger of these glad tidings of bad news. I have to shake my head sometimes. The news was in full throat on daylight savings time weekend. Doom and gloom was everywhere.
As I thought back, I remembered when they were the heralds of our salvation. "The economy will be spurred ahead by DST. We will have more time to spend playing catch in the yard with our children. We will be able to mow the lawn after work during the week. This will free up time on the weekend and allow us to spend more time at the beach relaxing." All of these were written and spread freely in the media. With these new revelations, I suppose that they should have provided the caveat "if you live until the weekend."
As a Hoosier living at the center of the universe, I had an even more unique perspective as we held out for years as the forces of heart disease, bad driving, and depression assailed us yearly with missives about how confusing it was for people to come to meetings in Indiana because we held our ground and didn't change our clocks two times a year. We continually heard how difficult it was for airlines to program their computers for the one Hoosier exception and keep the planes from falling from the sky. This strikes me as odd when you consider that computers will someday revolt, take over and . . . wait for it . . . cause planes to fall from the sky.
But I digress. This isn't another tome describing my dislike of DST. That is well documented. It is a tome about the madness of the media. How can you advocate for one thing and then once sated whine and complain about all of the things you just got? Through the years there have been gallons of ink spilled over DST and now gallons more are being spilled on the opposing view. For goodness sake, save the indigo people.
I don't know if it is fake news. It does strike me that it is news written by people with the emotional maturity of two year olds. I suppose that I should be more charitable and say that once actions are taken other voices join the discourse and the zigzagging back and forth brings us to a fuller picture. However, we don't view the media as made up of multiple voices. We bemoan the idea that the other side is lurking out there. Politicians of all stripes deny the legitimacy of the media of the other side. Oh for goodness sake, don't get all huffy and tell me that your candidate has never done that. That the left is pure as the wind driven snow, or the right's poop doesn't stink with regards to this issue is patently false. It would take me about three minutes to provide documented examples of "vast right wing conspiracies" or examples of "fake news."
I do think that all news is self-serving. As I have been ruminating on this topic for the past three weeks, my memories have been taken back to September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of that tragic week, I was watching the McLaughlin Group. It was a weekly syndicated news panel on PBS. It featured two liberal and two conservative journalists to discuss the issues of the day. That week one of the topics was what should be done with the terrorists who did not make it on the plane that day. To a person; liberal and conservative alike agreed that they should be tortured so that any information that would save innocent lives in the future could be gathered. The methods varied. Some wanted to repeal anti torture directives and do the work ourselves. Others wanted to farm the dirty work out to other less enlightened cultures who were not as squeamish about torture. The point is everyone agreed. Everyone was pulling out their pliers, car batteries, and water boards preparing to get their pound of flesh.
Yet their fervor waned. The cry for blood subsided and soon several of them sang a different tune. They went back to serving their own agenda and started whining and complaining about the very things they advocated for in the first place or started blindly assenting to torture that had gone too far.
What are we to do? It seems that we should stop listening to the news. It should be recognized for what it is; a group of elitists telling us what we need to know from their perspective. What would happen if we stopped listening and started talking to one another; weighing the words and perspectives, challenging and testing, pulling apart and rebuilding.
It strikes me that we wouldn't be any worse off. Plus, I might not still be looking for that hour of sleep.
Take care.
Roger
