Twenty-four news has been in the news recently. Not really; It’s just that the other day, my Grouch e-mailbag got filled, which is to say that I got an actual request in my “About” tab to grouse about something. When I say “just the other day,” I mean since the day I started my blog. I don’t check often, quite obviously. The request, from heylookawriterfellow, was to bitch talk about 24-hour news channels.
Now I had not considered this topic and it was not on my radar screen but, being a Curmudgeon-at-Large who professes the ability to grouse about anything at will, I steeled myself up to the task. I underwent heavy medication, slept on a horse-hair blanket in the middle of summer, drank vinegar straight, chewed on a few nails, hit myself a few times with a ball-peen hammer and I was rip-raring to go.
Whenever I need to, I can listen to an all-news, all-the-time radio station and have to admit that I like it. At set times within any half-hour segment, I know that I will get an update on traffic, weather, sports and business, with other newsworthy items interspersed. Twenty four hour television news channels are another kettle of fish entirely.
What determines what is newsworthy and how often and how long we should hear about it? Now, of course, certain events, like the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Hurricane Katrina and major earthquakes rightfully take and hold center stage for a long period of time. But what about all the rest of our not-so-worldly events? Over that last week, I am certain that an unexplained death has taken place in Moscow (population 11.8 million), a beating in Shanghai (population 17.8 million), and a robbery in New York City (population 8.2 million). Is that news and do you care? Well, if you’re the person(s) directly involved or affected, sure you care but is it newsworthy and do we need to hear about it just to fill the hours of a twenty-four hour news station?
In the last week, an 83 year old woman got attacked by a rabid beaver while swimming in a lake near a metropolitan area. The event made national news! I’m sure that this item is not going to change the course of world events although it may change the beaver population on this particular lake. Are we that desperate for any news whatsoever? Guess so.
What irks me even more that the thought of twenty-four news channels is the talking yelling heads of public affairs programs that now fill air-time. Shows like the McLaughlin Group make me apoplectic. The basic premise is to start screaming in response to a question by the moderator ringmaster until you have shouted down the other panelists circus animals. Now if one of these panelists became rabid and bit the others, THAT would be newsworthy!
Perhaps the concept could be enlarged to liven up twenty-four hour news – a combination of news items, family feud and WWF Smackdown. News anchors would report the news while screaming at each other and breaking chairs over each others’ heads in front of a live audience.
Ah for the good old days, when all the news I needed was delivered once a week by pony express.
According to Recent Studies
Everything you never wanted to know.
January 2012: Heavy boozers are imbibing more frequently according to new government data that looked, for the first time, at the detailed habits of binge drinkers. One in six U.S. adults reported binge drinking at least once in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year, according to a Center for Disease Control report. Seniors — those older than 65 — reported binge drinking the most often of any age group.
[Getting old has at least one advantage.]
November 2011: In a new study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, men who have had sex with animals were twice as likely to develop penile cancer as those who stick with their own kind.
[Men, let this be a warning to you! The next time you are visiting Scotland or New Zealand and that sheep gives you a knowing wink, turn away.]
August 2011: The theory that hidden-from-view undergarments are the first thing men stop buying as the economy heads south has former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan among its subscribers. Sales of men’s underwear rose 7.9% in August [2011] from a year earlier, according to research firm NPD Group. By this measure, at least, we’re moving in the right direction.
[Presumably, if a lot of men are wearing only underwear, the economy is moving in the wrong direction.]
June 2009: In the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, same-sex sexual behavior extends far beyond the well-known examples that dominate both the scientific and popular literature: for example, bonobos, dolphins, penguins, albatrosses and fruit flies.
[You know, I always suspected penguins. But albatrosses? Who knew?]
November 2007, Science Daily: There are promiscuous antelopes. A new study by the Department of Biology, University of Jyva¨ skyla, Finland and the Institute of Zoology, Regent’s Park, London, UK, reveals that sexual conflict runs in reverse. Among African topi antelopes, females are the ones who aggressively pursue their mates, while males play hard to get.
[Guys, if you are on safari, don’t get too close to the antelopes. See the November 2011 warning.]
December 2006, ABC News: Weeding through the value of the nation’s cash crops, a study (“Marijuana Production in the United States” by marijuana policy researcher Jon Gettman) released today states that marijuana is the U.S.’s most valuable crop.
[For some reason, I thought it was Brussel sprouts.]
January 2006: At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, it was announced that a spinning black hole in the constellation Scorpius created a stable dent in the fabric of space-time.
[There is a dent in space-time? What is space-time made of, aluminum siding?]
The announcement explains that gravity waves are distortions in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
[Wait a minute, space-time is a fabric? Then how does it get dents? Maybe it’s a combination of aluminum siding and under amour. How do you repair it if it tears? ]
March 2012: Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope are mystified by a merging galaxy cluster known as Abell 520 in which concentrations of visible matter and dark matter have apparently come unglued.
[There is a definite need for a space epoxy repair kit.]
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