Day After Day it Reappears

I am about to stop paying attention to the news. I realize that might sound like a fool's errand for a journalism student, but it is becoming clear to me that the news as it is currently packaged and delivered is having a deleterious impact on my life. Any sense of self-efficacy, hope for the future, or faith in humanity that I scrape together is never any match for fifteen minutes spent perusing headlines on the Internet. This morning, for example, started out with aces. Episode 1 of Spooks Season 2 finished downloading, and I watched it before I went to work.

What jolly fun!

And then, without even thinking, I visited www.truthout.org, and was virtually pimp-slapped by the confirmation hearings for Alberto Gonzales (he thinks torture is "kinda" okay, as long as we're the ones to administer it, thus insuring that if people are tortured and robbed of their personal freedoms it is at least done in the name of Democracy and Freedom).

On the way to work, one of my favorite songs came up on my ipod. It was "Possum Kingdom," by the Toadies.

Yeah forever!

Then the news ticker on the side of the college where I work informed me that 15 Iraqis and one American were killed today in one attack.

What does it profit me to know these things? Do I feel inspired to take action, to take up arms against a sea of injustice, and by opposing, end it? I'm no Hamlet. I can be decisive, just not effective. In fact I proved back in November that I am pretty impotent when it comes to events outside my little world.

Is there a reason I should keep depressing myself every time I turn on a television or sit in front of a computer? Maybe. I don't know.