Have you ever stood before a food buffet so rich, so sumptuous that you were unable to choose what you wanted to eat even though you were starving? The warm, meaty smell coming off the carving table awakens your hunger for animal protein perhaps touching some long lost hunter aspect while pasta-based dishes warming above flames contained by small cans promise the solid comfort of carbohydrates, tomatoes, and more cheese than you probably should eat in one sitting. The dessert table likely catches your eye too even though you were probably trained from childhood that dessert is a reward for cleaning your plate and not something to be truly enjoyed by those who haven’t proven themselves “good.” So you stand there, heavy, gold-edged china plate in hand and gape as those with more surety, or more gluttony, stream passed to partake of the meal as if there will never be another one.
Reading the news lately I’ve felt as if I were standing in front of just such a buffet: there are so many things from which to choose, so many things happening that poke and prod at the fabric of our collective reality, that I’m finding it hard to know where to begin.
- Don Imus shooting his mouth off and proving with a swiftness that made my head spin that consequences are still sometimes tied to actions (though not for the reasons many may think).
- Players from the Duke University lacrosse team being cleared and the district attorney’s actions (incompetence or perfidy…you decide) revealed in a brou ha ha that probably never should have made it to the national stage.
- The media frenzy (is that taking place anywhere but on the east coast?) over the shootings at Virginia Tech and the way the incident has been pulled, twisted, and manipulated to serve one cause (gun control vs. right to bear arms; security vs. privacy) or another all of whom still ignore the lessons we should have learned from Columbine eight years ago. (Hint: it’s a deeper cultural problem that won’t be fixed by granting students the right to carry concealed weapons in class or by debating whether or not security takes primacy over privacy on college campuses).
- Global warming becoming the hot (ha!) issue with the media and minor celebrities who don’t realize that their idiotic calls for action (um…OK, so the bus runs on biodiesel Sheryl, that’s great, but one square of toilet paper per person isn’t going to work for those of us in the real world who don’t have the Brazilian on a regular basis and who actually, you know, eat food and excrete solid matter) which don’t take into account the added cost of saving the planet and how the $8 light bulb really isn’t an option for the person working minimum wage and spending every dime she earns just to survive.
- Alec Baldwin going on national television to complain that there are different behavioral standards for men and for women. Um, Alec? Try looking in your pay check or at the freedom you have and then complain about differing behavioral standards, OK?
- And let us not forget the political bloviating going on around the long, long, long run up to the 2008 Presidential election and the war in Iraq.
So many things to choose from I don’t know where to begin.
On ScienceBlogs was a link to someone tracking the myriad of pet theories on the cause. As of this morning, there are over fifty. (ScienceBlogs’ interest was the blame on vaccinations.)
It’s also interesting how much living in the “other” Washington insulates me from a lot of the news. (In some sense, this is a relief because I can’t do anything about Imus, VA Tech, or Alec Baldwin. I will, however, continue to use as much toilet paper as necessary.:) To wit, the top three headlines are: Supreme Court ruling that benefits Microsoft, Seattle Art Museum expansion, and some bridges are sensitive to flames.
As for the bloviating (beautiful choice of words), our primary is still late May, by which point the field will be narrowed down. Unless they move it to February, like every other state’s doing, it seems too early to get excited beyond the nightly summaries from The Daily Show’s Indecision 2008. (And NPR.)
As always, I very much enjoy your thoughtful writing.