What Passes as News

What passes as news 051111

Arnie and Marie are splittin’ the sheets, and Governor Jerry’s just getting back to work after having skin cancer removed from the end of his nose.  And, that’s the good news.

It’s time for the Wednesday update, and everyone has turned something in but the Fringe Editor, and I got nothin’.  Now I understand why Andy Rooney used to say things like “ever wonder why new tires have those little tits on them?  What do they do?  You’d think they’d slow the tire down as it goes “rrrrrrrr” around at highway speeds.” 

It isn’t that there’s no news; go to one of the big papers, they manage to slam down enough words to make an issue.  But, the Prospect doesn’t care who’s in rehab (unless it’s us, damn we hate rehab) and we don’t care what bizarre murder site was found (ditto, it isn’t us) and we don’t care where the aristocrats dine, since there’s only about six restaurants in the county. 

There’s news that isn’t news: despots decimate their people; oil soils the sea; generals braggadocio the nation into war; the rich do things differently.  Oil companies made unimaginable profits, and the price of gas goes up and up.  A politician didn’t lie, but bent the truth into a twisted caricature of itself.  The unemployment rate has started to even out because people out of work long enough eventually kill themselves or die in a ditch, reducing the essential surplus of workers we have. 

Regionally, services will have to be cut; businesses will close; laws will be passed that are impossible to observe. 

Locally, the Sierra County Board of Supervisors instructed Tim Beals, Director of Scolding and Indignant Letters to draft a scolding and indignant letter to someone.  Also locally, someone got drunk and is going to jail; someone can’t pay their bills; someone decided to move away.

Thousands of Arnies and Marias split the sheets today; thousands of old men tried to deal with cancer.  It’s tough making common misfortune and politics as usual sound like news.  We do a pretty good job most days.

Not today, though!

The little tits on a new tire are vents where the air rushes out during molding; they don’t appear on some high quality tires because they’re snipped and recycled.