I have begun my quadrennial embargo on news.
Every presidential election year, I turn off my radio when the news comes on at a certain point in the year because, for god in heaven’s sake, it’s not telling me a single thing that I don’t already know! In fact, my go-to radio news source, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” has been hammering the same goddamn things into my ears (and, subsequently, into my by-now poisoned consciousness) for the last three months.
Enough!
Me.
The solitary bit of news on the election front since January has been Joe Biden dropping out and Kamala Harris filling in. That’s it. That was a day’s worth of news. Otherwise, leftovers.
Were I a TV news junkie, I’d be switching off that medium as well but, as loyal Pencillistas know, I forewent TV news — how long has it been? — for pity’s sake, 30 years now! Yep, soon after George HW Bush’s Line in the Sand War in Iraq (shout out to “The Big Lebowski”) I realized TV news did nothing but make me profoundly uneasy and unhappy. It was obvious to me, even three decades ago, that the purpose of TV news was not to inform me and enhance my appreciate of humanity but to reach deep into my reptilian brain and make me…, well, a junkie. A real live, addicted as all hell junkie. TV News wants me to fear, to be hyper-vigilant, to panic, to be desperate for the next minuscule morsel of information that will either scare the bejesus out of me or cause me to relax for a precious few moments.
So, way back then I said enough to CNN and ABC News and all the rest.
Since then I’ve been following the tragic opera that is The World via newspapers (online, of course — I’m not a complete Luddite, after all) and the aforementioned NPR morning show. But the radio end of that combo ain’t happening right now. My embargo likely will continue for at least a good week after the election (that is, unless my gal wins — in that case, I’ll be gobbling up every single news tidbit like a dog waiting under the dinner table).
Readers of this global communications colossus might think that because my Big Talk radio interview program is on WFHB, I’d have been listening to news sources like Democracy Now!, which airs daily at noon on 91.3 FM. Just between you and me (don’t tell Jar Turner and Kade Young), I find it almost as uncomfortable to listen to Amy Goodman and Juan González as I do to Anderson Cooper or David Muir. Whereas the Democracy Now! duo brings us tons of unvarnished, relevant news about our government and our planet, pretty much everything they report is fatalistic and disparaging of the United States. That is, of us.
There’s plenty of evil that goes on in Washington, in the Pentagon, on Wall Street, and in the statehouses and city halls all over this 21st century empire but to be fed a strict diet of it all can result in a malignancy of the soul. So — shhh! — that’s why I listen to NPR news.
As for my online newspaper consumption, it’s easy as hell for me to skip over the latest polls; the most recent Trump verbal defecation; the feature about the wife and husband who are voting for Harris and Trump, respectively; or the interview with the oddball who’s four-square in favor of a Jill Stein presidency. It’s NPR’s news programs that I’m banning from my home transistor and my car AM/FM.
Sorry, Steve Inskeep and crew, but I don’t need your warmed-over canned hash anymore this election season. I’m on a mental health diet.