The Insult of the Southern California Fire Coverage
Now that the winds have died down, the fog's come in and the fires in San Diego are coming under control I feel that one aspect of the news coverage on the fires needs to be called out.

Some of the news coverage talked about all the TV stars who's homes were threatened by the fires. And I use "star" in a very loose way here. The idiot mongoloid knob on Everybody Loves Raymond, yeah the one who threatened to quit the show unless they bumped his pay up to some ridiculous amount. His vacation home was one of the ones that the fires tried to consume.

And oh my lucky day, they saved his house, his spare house. Thank the stars because I just don't know what I would have done if I'd known the oversized dumbass had one of his several homes burn down. That would have been a true tragedy. Not like the thousands of people who lost everything they own, some even lost their lives.

It just galls the holy hell out of me to think that its more important to know what's happening to these completely self absorbed "stars" and their potential losses. Not like he couldn't afford to buy five new houses with the half a million dollars an episode he's making now or whatever his tantrum landed him in the way of big money. Nevermind the fact that some people lost everything and have nothing, some don't even have insurance so they are literally back at square one. And they don't have the luxury of making a half million a week. They make $1000 a week or $1200 a week and that's a huge discrepancy.

The other tendency I've been noticing and calling attention to is the utterly negative slant to the news. They always, always, always look for the most depraved, the most evil, the worst news in everything and report on that. Instead of trying to show the brighter side of the shitty news, they focus on the worst aspects, the filth, the gunk that sticks to the bottom of your shoes.

Its selling the future to pay the present. It creates the culture of fear that Michael Moore explores (partially, he also promotes himself shamelessly and exploits Columbine victims for his own causes) in Bowling for Columbine. Why not end the news with something positive? Talk about the outpouring of aid and help to the fire victims, talk about heroism, talk about something completely unrelated but good. Don't always, heck, don't regularly, set your sights on the worst aspects of the news. All that does is generate more fear and more insanity, more knee jerk reactions to violence, more stereotyping, more racial profiling, more hate, more locked doors, more distrust of one's neighbors.

Its up to the media to portray the news and get ratings to stay on the air, yes, this is true. But continually aiming for shock value inures us to real tragedy, it closes our minds off and makes us look at other people with fear and distrust.

This is an open call to all media agencies in the world to try and lighten up, to aim higher and not wallow in the filth that is our culture (or seems to be because that's all the news ever shows). I think we might just find out that the world is a better place if we just ease up and try to find the good in people instead of always going right for the closet to find the evil that lurks there.