Something is seriously wrong with the media in America. Hopefully that’s not a startling revelation to anyone at this point. But I have realized recently that something is seriously wrong with me for which I blame the media. I cannot take anything seriously. Last week the local evening news was on and one of the lead stories was an internet porn ring had been “busted” and many of the girls performing sex acts were under-aged, however the boss or pimp or whatever his title is, was conscientious enough to have them get permission slips signed by their parents. Also a meth lab was “busted” in which the lab itself had been set up in the baby’s room, so the mother was also being brought up on charges of child abuse, and we see some cop in riot gear carrying a naked baby like it was a bomb. They followed up by saying that it is becoming very common for these labs to be set up in children’s room exposing them to deadly chemicals, etc, etc ending with some random woman on the street crying “Won’t somebody please think about the children.” Let me add that they were showing actual footage of these “busts” that were filmed as they occurred, because you know we need to see all the action otherwise we might change the channel and watch COPS. My reaction thru all this… I couldn’t stop giggling. That’s not normal is it? It’s certainly not appropriate. But I just never cease to be amused at the stupidity of your common criminal or completely stupefied by the ability of the media to sensationalize it with a straight face.
I used to live in Hawaii, where the evening news was fairly harmless. Hawaii for the most part functions like a small town, and with a very low crime rate there just wasn’t much tragedy for them to exploit. Then I moved to New Jersey (please don’t ask why) and talk about day and night. New Jersey doesn’t even rate it’s own news media so instead you get network news from both New York City and Philadelphia - considerably more tragedy available, obviously. Contrary to what you might expect Philadelphia news was far worse, with a much higher body count than New York. If you made it all the way to the weather report you would require a tranquilizer. The City of Brotherly Love, it ain’t - very disturbing. If it’s really important I’ll read the headline on the internet and skim the first and last paragraph of the story and move on with my life. Then I move to Denver, half way between Hawaii and New Jersey, not geographically but in lots of other ways including the news. They have a considerable amount of crime but still act like a small town, and like everything that happens everywhere affects Denver on an intimate level. I think the whole state needs therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the Columbine thing. Not to be insensitive, but they’ve become a bit wacky. Last month, they actually had a “lock-down” at a high school and kept the students captive inside because somebody reported a man was outside the school with a gun. It turned out to be a cell phone, not a gun. A week later another high school was locked down because a man in the neighboring residential area called the police and said he was planning to commit suicide. He was several blocks away! Yeah, I know, it’s a little nuts. And let’s not even get into the Sept. 11 thing, when we were all glued to the news for days and we were fed one false report after another until we couldn’t make sense of the retractions. Talk about making the worst of a bad situation. Anyway, I’m getting off track and way too serious, but I will go ahead and say I’m pretty sure that the media grossly exaggerates and just flat out lies to make everything seem as horrific as possible so that we’ll be afraid to leave the house, so that we’ll stay home and watch more news. Well their evil little conspiracy has backfired with me. I am completely desensitized. I am beyond desensitized, I am beyond jaded, I am beyond cynical, I am actually amused. I’m completely warped! I wonder if I can sue. Oh, but you know what I do enjoy? When they have a reporter “live on the scene” of something that happened hours or even days ago. It’s 11:00 pm, it’s snowing heavily, but they’ve got some blonde chick shivering in front of the courthouse because the jury reached a verdict that afternoon. That really makes me laugh! Anyway, if it’s crime and punishment I’m interested in, I can always watch three episodes of “Law & Order” a day. I love that show! I could write a whole entry about “Law & Order,” maybe I’ll do that next time it would be more interesting.