Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Missing the News


Most days, you have the world's permission to miss much of the news.

The major stories are not the ones in the headlines. They are the incremental ones; the crises in the making that will clobber us in a few months or years as journalists breathlessly act as if the problem came out of nowhere. As for the "who's up and who's down" stories, they are like the soap operas that can be neglected for months because when you eventually tune in, Troy is still in a coma and Tiffany is still cheating on Alejandro.

That's why in general, when it comes to substance, books trump news articles and ideas trump personalities.

2 comments:

Kurt Harden said...

But Obama's approval ratings are up on the matter of his "handling" of the "Tucson Shooting". . .

Michael Wade said...

Kurt,

Up today, down tomorrow. I think that politics is closer to poetry than to prose.

Michael