Changing Channels - April 17 2022

 

Changing Channels

April 17 2022

The crawl

seems faster than that,

zipping briskly

across the bottom of the screen

eager to inform.

It has the same effect

as those relentlessly chipper hosts

with good teeth and big hair

who look way too attractive

to be so breezily chatting 

so early in the day.

Or perhaps

our short attention spans

are getting even shorter.

Headlines, jammed back-to-back,

distracting the eye

and far too shouty,

dangling teasers

about breaking news and special reports.

Pundits

spouting talking points

above the non-stop crawl.

As if we could multi-task,

our limited cognitive faculties

handle this overload

of bad news

and worse tragedies,

bust and boom

impending doom.

Or choose, instead

to change channels, and be entertained,

because who can resist

distraction

eye candy

escape?

The world burns

and fuel is added to the fire,

while we go on imagining

all is fine.

In the airport concourse

the news channel flickers

24 hours a day,

large screens

loom overhead.

But the sound is off,

and the people are going about their business

oblivious to that bright red banner

and talking heads.

Like background music, and white noise

we've become immune to atrocity.

Because bad things happen

to other people

somewhere else.

Because bad actors

wear black hats

and speak in foreign tongues;

we'll see them coming, soon enough.

Because we're tired of breaking news;

the fevered newness

that elbows out the last big thing

and breathlessly awaits the next.

New

or it isn't news.

Yet the same old story,

as history roughly repeats

and we so quickly forget.

I don't actually watch any of this stuff. I'm a news junkie, but I read newspapers and periodicals. (Yes, vintage, “old school”, the “lamestream” press!) My mind — I suspect all human minds — don't absorb, process, and synthesize information very well from moving images on screens. Television news is engaging, but also distracting. There is too much breathless impatience and too little real depth. Not to mention that the 24 hour cable news channels have to fill time, while also providing regular jolts of adrenaline: a poor formula for understanding, context, nuance. Forget about agendas and ideological echo chambers.

Mostly, I'm utterly demoralized about the state of the world and how horrible human beings can be. Because there is always a war, somewhere. Because rape is not because of a few bad apples, but rather is a tactic of war — all wars, it seems. And because after the “war to end all war” and the Holocaust, there has been a continuing litany of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides: off the top of my head, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Chechnya, the Uyghurs, Ukraine. So how can I blame people who turn away, “change channels”, focus on their private lives and domestic concerns?