This just in...

If anyone knows about recent events in my life, they now know that I work for Wells Fargo. While spending eight hours a day in a bank lobby, a 42-inch plasma screen TV streams CNN into my brain. Things can also get all mixed up some days and we flip over and watch MSNBC or Fox News. Either way, the current news has been making my ears twitch and been blinking in my peripheral vision. After just a few weeks of this, I’ve come to the startling realization that this nation’s media is drastically misguided and priorities are mind-numbingly out of whack.

As I type and you skim this blog, American citizens are overseas are devoting their lives to our daily freedoms. Like most American civilians usually do with unseemly or taboo topics, we’ve pushed this war to the back of our minds. Out of sight, out of mind. The war has been going on for almost five years now, and in that time over 3000 American brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters have lost their lives, and thousands more have been wounded and forever changed. As the numbers of casualties rises, the number of stories concerning them have dwindled and taken a backseat to much more ‘interesting’ headlines.

Also, in more recent and developing news, an election year is on the horizon. In a short while, our nation, the ‘most powerful nation in the world,’ will have a new leader. Although the press has been quite good about disclosing this fact, it is still somewhat back burner information. This is unthinkable because, for the first time in our nation’s history, we have forerunners who include a woman, a Black man, no war veterans of any kind, and a gambit of other candidates on either side who embody the future of our great nation.

These are just a few of the great and life-changing things that are currently affecting our daily lives. However, the American media has downsized their severity and prefer to cover stories concerning Paris Hilton’s stint in jail. The pressing questions that the media are answering concern the status of Brangelina, Britney Spears’s custody battle, and/or the latest starlet in rehab. The sad thing is that the viewers seem ignorantly content about the content.  Also, while on the topic of ignorance, in the wake of Miss Teen South Carolina’s mind-numbingly numb answer during 2 of the worst hours in broadcast television history,  it is equally numbing how interested we were in this particularly uninteresting answer.  YouTube practically shut down due to the overwhelming number of hits for this video. She was featured on the Today show, and CNN acted like someone had spotted blazing chariots coming down from the heavens.

While these ‘pressing,’ Mensa-esqe stories were going on the in the background I made a comment about the sad reality of what is now considered news. A coworker replied with the fact that they were tired of hearing about the war and the upcoming election. This stunned me. Why would one be tired of hearing about developing stories that can and will affect you and everyone you know? To not be a complete hypocrite, I must admit that I love a daily dosage of E! News, but the stories and press that should be the most important seem ‘boring’ or ‘tired.’ Maybe we should start tuning into media outlets that report on actual news and be a part of and be informed on our ever-changing world. Or we could just sit back and ignore these things, and b!+©H about the results later as Americans also like to do.