Not Necessarily the News
Sometime during the pandemic I stopped watching “news” on television. Might have been earlier than that, maybe closer to the 2016 election. I don’t regret it, and I certainly do not feel as if I have missed anything. I read the New York Times and the Star Ledger (best name ever) pretty faithfully. I get factual information, or what I am reasonably certain is factual, from other places as well. I don’t feel as if I’ve missed much, and, to the extent I have , that’s not from a lack of watching television.
It's not that I don’t love popular culture. I’m not even embarrassed to admit that I do. For my 70th birthday, as you already know, because I could not stop talking about it for a full year, I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert preceded by dinner at my favorite pizzeria. (Star Tavern in Orange, New Jersey. Don’t tell anyone I told you.) For my 50th birthday I went to Memphis to see Graceland and Sun Studios and Beal Street in addition to more serious places like the Museum of Civil Rights. But part of my concern with TV news is that it is entertainment trying to pass itself off as information. And I do not find the way TV news entertains particularly entertaining.
I do not like being argumentative, a highlight of TV news shows, and I do not enjoy listening to people who do. More important, I do not like to be frightened unnecessarily. This seems to be the primary way TV news chooses to entertain. Terrible things can and do happen. Fixating on them is not a way to fix them, perhaps even the opposite. If I want to be frightened, I can read a Stephen King novel. His book on writing, by the way, is one of the best out there. Otherwise, I am going to rely on newspapers and news magazines and websites to find out what is going on and trust in their truthfulness, or, at least, their desire to be truthful.
Instead of watching the news, I take long walks. I love to walk. More on that another time. I watch other things on television. Last night, for example, I watched the last episode of the last season of Mrs. Maisel. I’ll just say that for my money the last season of the last episode made slogging through the previous two seasons worthwhile. I’m a fan of Abbott Elementary. I worked in public education most of my career, much of that in urban education. I know each character personally. Anyone who has worked in a school district does. In the words of Leonard Cohen, You want it darker?, Barry is currently my favorite show.. As a child of culture snobs, I rebelled by developing more eclectic tastes. I have, for example, seen every season of Project Runway, and I am not embarrassed to say so.
The world changes continuously. Soon we will be getting information in other ways or new ways, or we will become the Borg (https://www.startrek.com/database_article/borg). Who knows? Meantime, we don’t get beautiful weather days like this too often. Go out and take a walk.