on tuesday night, i was busy working on a project on my laptop and trying to keep babylove away from my laptop, so never had a chance to turn on the television or surf the net. wednesday morning, i log onto the book of faces, and all i see are these status updates saying "yay for the chilean miners being rescued", "they've got the first one out", "praise God the chilean miners are being rescued".
now, i'm a christian and do believe in being thankful and giving Him the glory in things big and small. and there have recently been a lot of stories in the media about miners dying on the job and how dangerous the mining industry is in general. but i guess i was just surprised/ shocked at how personally invested everyone around me seemed to be in this story.
at first, i chalked it up to the fact that since the majority of stories on the new are negative-earthquake in haiti, somebody got murdered, the economy is tanking, politicians are being corrupt-that people were just happy to finally get a happy ending. but, i think it's something deeper than that. i mean, let's face it, there are plenty of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad tragedies happening everyday all around the world and even in our very own neighborhoods. the only difference is that the media doesn't have a camera rolling on them 24/7. take the ongoing aftermath of severe the flooding in afghanistan that nobody seems to care about, for example.
maybe it's the cynic in me, but i had to stifle an eye roll early tuesday afternoon when i pulled up msn's page and saw the big red "breaking news" box announcing that the first miner had been rescued. i actually kind of tuned out of this whole miner saga about a month ago when i heard a radio "news" story about how the wife of one of the miners found out about his previously secret affair with another woman due to all of the media coverage. it's one thing to write or report a story, but when the story being reported is about the effects of the story being reported, it kinda makes my vision blur and my head start to hurt.
it's kind of like the whole preacher plans to burn the koran on 9/11 story that got blown all out of proportion and resulted in deaths around the world as well as probably posing a threat to our national security. this "preacher" is probably just some random loser that nobody every heard of who lucked up into notoriety because of our 24/7 news cycle.
i love me some cnn, but last night while i was watching ac360, i just had to change the channel when anderson started talking to a correspondent on the scene. with a straight face, this reporter was talking about how the cheating miner's mistress loved watching the movie, titanic, and how she and this miner planned to hole up at home for days watching the movie now that he had been rescued. um, gag me with a spoon!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Rescue in Chile | ||||
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i'm a news junkie and all, but this whole, putting people on a pedestal and the media's tendency to try to create a fairy tale out of real life is a bit off the chain these days. google, "propoganda" with pat tillman, jessica lynch, or ft. hood hero policewoman if you don't believe it. don't bother googling the phrase "chilean miners", i can already tell you that you'll get 345 million hits.
i'll just a take a tip from the cheating miner's wife and sit this one out.
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