Sometimes, it just feels like it's going to rain

I was reading the Washington Post yesterday, and I just got a sick feeling in my stomach. Normally, the news in any newspaper is largely "sexy" material (war, corruption, Bush's feelings on Brokeback Mountain). The sexy is all that stuff that many people feel they shouldn't enjoy reading but they do. Not to mention that it's all that we can't do much about. Knowing, for instance, how many people have died in Iraq doesn't help us end the war, just like knowing Angelina Jolie used to wear a vile of Billy Bob Thorton's blood around her neck doesn't help us get any closer to her (trust us, we've tried...she didn't thank us for any of the blood we mailed her).

Well, yesterday, the headlines in the WP were both sexy and macabre:

Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change
Bush's Midterm Challenge
Hussein Trial Resumes, Quickly Descends Into Chaos (super sexy)
NASA Supporters Fear Bush May Cut Space Plan
Some Palestinians See End of Secular Dream
Peace Activists Threatened Anew
At Least 60 Killed in Poland Roof Collapse
Md. Corrections Officer Shot by Prisoner Who Took His Gun Dies
Mother, Child Critical After Being Hit by Car in Southeast
New Orleans Betrayed

These are not by any means all of the articles, however, this just struck me as an abnormally melancholy day: We're slowly being boiled alive in our own air; the one thing we had going for us in Iraq is falling apart; in addition to cutting so much from our science budget, Bush is going to cut NASA funding so that in thirty years the Chinese are going to be shooting us with death rays from the moon, the existence of Hamas is causing new problems in the Middle East (I refuse to say Hamas is causing problems, because they can't take all of the credit for their developement, i.e. extremism blossoms in certain environments), people are being kidnapped again in Iraq, and New Orleans isn't being rebuilt.

Those are all articles, I think, that are worth knowing, but that doesn't mean they're not sexy. What are you going to do about Saddam's trial?

As for the poor people in Poland and the Mom/son hit by a car, what good does that do for anyone? Where is the enlightenment? It just seems absurd to print stories like that. We didn't send Angie those viles of blood so that she could start a collection, we wanted her! In the same sense, newspapers shouldn't exist to present us with sorrowful stories just because we're sick enough to read them.

I'm getting somewhere with this...just bare with me.

Technorati Tags: journalism, Washington Post, Saddam, Hussein, Bush, Science, NASA, Terrorism, Hamas, Iraq