Touching Reality

Okay. I've no delusions here. This here blog. No famous writer's blog, this, naah. Anyone who reads this either will be a friend, or have stumbled over this. Essentially, my more-public notepad, this. Writing exercise. Fine. Touching reality, I am.

So, if I can be touch with reality, and my worth in a world of billions, why can't they be, those six o'clock news personalities? Even those who actually write their own copy. And not just read, often badly, the stuff scrolling over the teleprompter. Can't they see we might not have time to hang on their every precious word?

Tonight, the weathergal who sits me down, staring at her, because she's a pretty on-air personality, she started hinting of a bad change for tomorrow's weather. Sussed it out for myself from the freezing outside, and the halo round the moon, the obvious — snow. They bantered it to and fro, like a badminton birdie, those on-air personalities. Oh, it is a change, yes...Oh, again...Bad, but not too bad, yes. On and on. Filling all of a minute, because that's what they were supposed to do, fill a minute because it was too early for weather. Too early to actually tell us anything useful.

True, no more than the expected banter. Clues enough, there. Got the weather forecast, then, even if she never once said the dreaded word.

My growling set in as I saw again the thing News has become. Purveyor of only so much information as will fit, and fitting the broadcaster's leaning, if not bias. An entertainment, really. And as uplifting as blood sport, generally. Hovering about catastrophe, like vultures. Feeding us numbingly repetitive bits about crime, the failings of grand Justice, the Bad News about the baddest among humankind, or the least fortunate. Daring then to ask if bad news is bad for us! Countered by pretty weathergal and two-minute video blog about the good some folks do, or a cuddly pet moment, before Sports and closing banter.

Self-congratulatory awards in telejournalism abound. Apparently that talking head an object of public trust in those unbiased polls. In Vancouver, the media as much a 2010 Olympics cheerleader. Official so-and-so and a weather report for the mountain venue preceding the host city. Filler, all. The vacuous banter before robot cameras, and us, expected to sit there and wait, numb and dumb as robots, was my enough.

Changed the channel. To the Weather Channel. After that short and informative visit, confirming my dreadings, and readying me inside one minute for tomorrow's commute, I tuned the teevee to TCM. Night of the Iguana. Atonement and hope. Ava Gardner. Richard Burton. Debbie Kerr, pretty as an eye-catching librarian.