this just in

In my house we talk about how 90% of what is on the news isn't really news. It may be interesting, but it's not news. We talk about this a lot. About 90% of the time the news is on.

Is it useful to me as a person? To us as a community? To we as a people who are trying to better the country and world we live in? If no, it's not news. Everything is so damn sensational that we are all convinced that our world is terrible and evil and falling apart and we are all going to be raped and shot and beaten and only prayer and isolation and a good set of locks will ever save us from a horrible fate.

Guess what? It's not terrible and evil. Well, it kinda is. But it isn't any worse than it ever was. It's probably better than ever, but no one tunes in at six to hear how crime rates are down and there are more kittens and roses now than there were five years ago. But every one seems to need a good dose of how it is shaping up to be a fun summer because it should be warmer and sunnier than it was a few months ago when we weren't having fun because it was colder and greyer because it makes us feel better after we hear how many people were stabbed and how many innocent bystanders were shot and how terrible it is that our world is falling apart. (Read: I'm sorry if this sounds cruel, but how many innocent people do you know that stand around on a drug corner past midnight? Yeah, bitches. That's what I thought. And don't be fooled because that innocent bystander is pregnant or a grandmother. Crackheads and thugs get pregnant too, and your cute little idea of a grandmother is not the typical grandmother that gets caught up in this crap, blogs the girl who just got off the phone with a 32 year-old crack-headed facially-tattooed pregnant grandmother who is mad because children's services is "making her go to parenting classes or some sorta shit for no reason". Oh, wait. I'm sorry. That should read 31 year-old. My arithmetical bad. My brain is fiscally set to 2009 but the world is still stuck in 2008)

The major stations refuse to cut into scheduled sitcom garbage programming- with it's oh-so-precious, dollar-fetching commercial-advertising airtime- with real news, but they are more than willing to cut into real news with a bunch of good-looking toothy pundits giving us their take on the real news while the real news is still going on in real time in the background.

Holy crap! I see by the tiny ticker at the bottom of the station identification logo that Hillary is conceding! Where is the news? Turn on the news!

"Lex Feelgood, what do you have to say about it?"

"Blah blah blah I knew that guy over there back when we went to a really good college and before my daddy got me this job, and now back to you, Staci (with an 'i') Tittersout."

"Lex, while you were talking, we just found out that Hillary isn't really conceding, let's go to the file footage to show you what she was saying while your mic was on and hers was off..."

Gah!

I read more blogs than I do news sites. I care more about what you do in your house with your friends and family than I care about a bakery in South Jersey with the best turnovers in the tristate area or what the Shorecast will be this summer. Our local headlines are flooded with stories about the pretty liar thief who likes to almost show her boobs in all her pictures and newscasters sending out racy bikini pictures to a married newscaster man and fighting with police while screaming "I'm a newscaster!" and getting her emails checked by another newscaster who was taken off the air and not answering his phone and hey wait! his newscaster wife works for another newscasting station and her newscaster partner is not having his newscaster contract renewed so she must be devastated about her newscaster husband and her newscaster buddy and probably worried about her newscaster job. That is shitcasting. Not newscasting.

This morning while someone with way too much make-up on for 7am was yammering about nothing in particular for three seconds past her allotted yammer time, I saw a still of Barack Obama joining hands with his wife on a platform in St. Paul. That is news. News that makes a whole lot of other news about politics and civil rights and equality for the last fifty years valid and worthwhile and historical and I got a lumpy throat while I burned that image into my brain so I never forget it. In my country there is a black man with a shot at getting his portrait on the wall of the White House taking the next step while a woman with maybe possibly still a chance to have hers up there is deciding whether she still wants to stay in this race. Holy crap. Why is Sheinell Jones still talking about where to get the best roasted pork in the city? Seriously. They led into Obama's nomination by talking about the fact that he promises to try whiz on his steak next time he is in town and he wants a pork sandwich from John's on Snyder. Who is writing this effing copy? John on Snyder?

How is a girl to keep up on local current events? Oh, right. The BBC.

So how are things in your town today? I'm guessing that it is sunny despite a few gunfights between no one you know or care about on a street you've never heard of with a chance of a crappy festival in a neighborhood you aren't familiar with featuring local activists and marching bands from three towns over with dollar hotdogs sold by ABC Meat Market and a free t-shirt for the first fifty people that park in the EFG Parking Lot and WXYZ radio will be there with bumperstickers and keychains?