Mon, July 12, 2004

Amusingly, although political rhetoric recently drove the most prolific comments in this site's history (ironically, in response to my intentionally non-political review of Fahrenheit 9/11), my intent upon returning from my trip was to steer clear of the politics for a while. I enjoy stoking a healthy debate, but I also like writing about things that we can all agree on, such as reality TV.

However, in today's reading (my first real chance to sit down and see what's going on online in over two weeks), I ended up on Lost Remote's coverage of the new documentary/DVD show-and-tell project "Outfoxed".

Lost Remote also linked to a column at the "LA Times" which indicates that people actually want bias in their news, because they want their existing opinions validated, not challenged. I get almost all my news from the Internet or The Daily Show, and I like to think that I watch Jon Stewart not because he's left-leaning, but because he hates the other media outlets as much as I do. I don't flock to him as a validator of my beliefs, I'm just running away from the networks and 24/7 cable outlets as fast as I can – he's a last resort. (A blindingly funny and incisive last resort.) Stewart says that they try to keep the show in the middle, offending the left as often as the right. I'm inclined to believe it; he certainly isn't "going easy" on Kerry, and I'm sure the show would be as critical of a Democratic president, if we had a Democratic president this stupid. (I am, however, obviously unqualified to judge the objectivity of The Daily Show.)

Anyway, the "LA Times" column made me feel bad: am I really like all the other 18- to 30-year-olds who are out of touch with current events because we don't watch enough news? I used to love watching Brokaw in the evenings with Mom, but these days, I just can't stomach any of the networks. Out of guilt, I loaded CNN.com, resolved to better inform myself.

And, of course, this is what I get:

Officials discuss how to delay Election Day – CNN continues to stoke the nebulous Al Qaeda panic by telling us that there will be attacks on Super Tuesday in November.

(By the way, this was the top story on CNN.com about ten minutes ago; I had a screenshot and everything. But my computer crashed and I lost it – stupid Apple!)

Just when I was getting over that ambiguous Tom Ridge press conference from last week (Stewart put it succinctly: "Be afraid enough not to vote for Kerry; but not so afraid that you don't vote for Bush."), it's back on!

I give up.