Absence

Maggie says:
I’ve been absent from m-pyre. Absent from the blog and absent from the news and current events. For me, this is major. Not a common happening. But the effect is interesting – I sit here in the decisions that have kept me so preoccupied and I feel the news wash over me. I don’t really pay attention to the news, but I recollect bits and pieces of it, I taste their aftertaste. And what’s been most striking about the last few weeks is that the news tastes bad. It tastes like artificial sweetener; it’s not real. To an admitted news junkie, this is watershed stuff: the news is not real.

Terry Shiavo coverage, Michael Jackson coverage, Tom DeLay coverage, it’s all terribly over-hyped and over-simplified, politicized and dumbed-down for the masses, but the masses aren’t that dumb. We’re not too stupid to understand that a situation like Terry Shiavo dying isn’t about the president’s midnight flight to sign a bill for her, it’s about our loved ones who could be her, or were her. It’s about life and death, not about rallies and proclamations.

I think in times when we are making intensely personal choices, we interpret life and all of its details with that same intense personal-ness. And I feel offended by newspaper headlines and TV proclamations and even Amy Goodman right now. Where is the personal connection between life outside of our home and the world? Why are things so loud? And so glossed over? And why is the gulf between politics and the personal so damn large?

Sometimes, I imagine us getting our daily news in a small circle of friends and family. There, we could process things on our own, talk quietly, not be fed how we’re supposed to feel. Sometimes, I wish the media would have more respect for what makes us all human, and what could make the news humane. But their attempts to appeal to us just make things worse. And today, I continue to choose to turn off the radio, not buy the newspaper, and curl up with a good book and a good cup of coffee.