Last night was another when I let my narcolepsy get the best of me. There was nothing in the first few online news sources I checked. That is not amazing. The local daily has changed its emphasis to non-news. Furthermore, in the last three years half a dozen WNC newspapers have required subscriptions for online viewing. Information is free these days, and those who try to sell it at a profit are not doing well.
And yet, there was news on the international level. All over the radio and in online blurbs, one heard about unrest in the Middle East. As in an Orwellian novel, the same four talking points were about all that was said. Now, I’m no history or social studies major, and so I have narrow views on a number of subjects.
For example, we recently heard news reports about the two or three people who converged on Washington, DC. They claimed to be part of a movement of independents associating themselves with the Tea Party. These violent people spewed racist remarks and comported themselves in a manner unbecoming US citizens. They had no thoughts of their own. They only regurgitated the mush poured under their skull caps by the evil hate-mongering Glenn Beck.
Now, the stuff in the Middle East is different. People are peacefully rioting because they hate America. There is no ring leader. Each act of civil disobedience is the logical conclusion drawn by independent experts in sociology after careful analysis of the world’s best decision-science software programmed with 110%-accurate data.
To add to my agitation, I consulted a printed newspaper which contained an “Analysis” from AP of the unrest in the Middle East. This great News McNugget would be worth reproducing in its minuscule entirety, but I fear copyright infringement. It referenced a YouTube interview with the president and a Twitter feed from the State Department.
The article is so shallow it would take a bigger person than I to mine any data. The president mentioned “issues,” and said he had recommended “political and economic reform” in conversations with Mubarak. The president wants to encourage “stability,” as everybody has wanted in the Middle East, and “democracy.” Now is the time for the United States to devise a “regional strategy . . . for change” in the Middle East.
Mrs. Bill Clinton called for “restraint and dialogue,” considered by AP to be “more forceful calls for reform.” State Department specialist Robert Damin emphasized the need to balance interests. The analysis justified the president’s lack of engagement as due to “working in a very narrow space.”
And that’s all you need to know.
