...is the news becoming more dark, more depressing and overwhelmingly difficult to digest? I find myself increasingly reluctant to scan internet news sources, watch tv news, read the scrolling headlines at the bottom of a tv screen. It seems to predominate on the negative. Look, I'm not Pollyanna and I don't expect happy sunshiney information every moment. I also wonder at the magnitude of that which is anything but positive.
The evening news is on. Another school shooting took place today with 7 dead thus far.
The Trayvon Martin case: murky in detail, heartbreaking in scope. It is every parent's nightmare. Why was Trayvon picked as the poster boy for something that happens all too often? He looks like a sweet, unassuming child. He looks like your child or mine. It's as simple as that.
Yesterday, a headline scrolled across the bottom of one of the cable new channel about a father and step mother holding his daughter hostage, starving, abusing her. She weighed 70 lbs when she escaped. She's 15.
Our troops continue to die overseas and for what? There's always talk of another front, another war, another nation we'll have to protect from themselves. Yet we seem unable to take care of our own.
Then there is the more mundane, not unexpected news about taxpayer waste. The GSA (General Services Administration) spent $823,000 taxpayer money on a retreat in Vegas in 2010. Nobody sanctioned this.
Then there's Middle America. We aren't in recovery but the 1% are.
Sunday night, "60 Minutes" aired a follow up episode on contemporary art purchases and the money to be made. It was all about the very wealthy speculating on what I perceive to be cutting edge crap. Apparently, Morley Safer and I think alike. He was dismissive of much of the contemporary art sold in the early 90s. It came back to haunt him during in this episode. He good naturedly acknowledged the art he disparaged had increased in value by the tens of millions. But, he didn't acknowledge it was worth it.
