Just about every major news story these days reminds me of George Santayana’s remark: “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” Sometimes I’m not certain whether today’s fanatics have forgotten their aims so much as that they are afraid that their aims will be revealed.
Just about every story of the day opens with partisan bickering. It’s hard to get a purchase on their merits under the circumstances.
It’s gotten really bad.
There are also the “controversies” that are mostly fiction but cause mass outrage and counter-reaction, including by major media outlets.
A recent example of that is the kerfuffle over the casting of Ariel in the live-action version of The Little Mermaid. You’d be hard-pressed to find any subject that wouldn’t aggravate somebody. There seems to be no attempt at estimating prevalance.
When I rise, first coffee, then Fox, If it’s just more partisan bickering, that’s good. Nothing really bad happened overnite.
But I realize that this bickering is the food Fox feeds on. Got to keep the audience entertained.
The only TV news I watch is ABC. I haven’t even channel-surfed past Fox in 20 years other than the Sunday morning talking heads program with Chris Wallace.
Yeah, the Ariel thing was pretty stupid. A couple of nobodies on Twitter object to the casting and major papers are writing stories about it. To me, it just adds to the pile of evidence that Twitter is a cancer on American news organizations.
The only TV news I watch anymore is the local news, mainly for the weather.
If there’s some world crisis that’s got the attention of everyone, I will usually dial-up France24 or Al Jazeera English by streaming on my computer or tablet.
Oh, I do still occasionally watch CBS Sunday Morning. I stopped watching the Sunday political talk shows completely about five years ago.
Yeah, those are my go-to sources, too.
When I want to know about something going on in Africa, I tend to turn to Le Monde.
Prior to 2017, I pretty much only watched MSNBC, particularly the Morning Show; after they went insane I gravitated to listening to whatever the name of the show is which is hosted by Bret Baier, which is more a straight-forward news program with a fairly balanced panel toward the end.
But it seems like we’ve drifted into the silly season, and I’ve moved towards European podcasts for my political fix: Talking Politics (Cambridge Professors frequently on BREXIT); Inside Politics (Irish Times); and the Dig (Jacobin affiliate, but only when discussing non-American politics). Politics without personal consequences, punctured only occasionally by recognition that the same things are happening elsewhere.