Very Accomplished Woman in Tragic Local Story

If you ask me the media – the vaunted MSM – gets a bad rap. I'm perfectly content to leave them alone and let them get on with it but I once heard an interesting theory from a friend. Namely, that massmarket media has become yet another ideological battleground between conservatives and liberals. Thanks, in no small measure, to the myth of liberal bias which has been hammered down our collective throats by the Republicon machine for years now. Neither side is happy and quick to criticize. But there's an important distinction to be drawn. The conservatives would be happy if the media just simply stopped doing their jobs. While the liberals are convinced that they already have (And, by way of corollary, would like them to get back to work.

I'm not entirely certain I agree with that pithy analysis although I think it has the ring of truth behind it. The newsmedia, after all, are the fourth estate. The guardians of public discourse. By providing the pubilc with the facts and leaving it up to them to make up their own minds, there supposed to be an essential part of our society. They're what makes it possible for a well-informed electorate to make the necessary decisions.

But, instead, they seem stuck on the trivial things. I honestly couldn't care about things like the Michael Jackson trial or the OJ trial or whichever attractive young woman has been kidnapped this week. There's a place for those things, sure, but the press have a roll in shaping the public debate that, for whatever reason, they've been neglecting. I'll put up with the fluff pieces and the disaster chasing and the circus of media trucks camped outside of whatever tragedy is hot at the moment if they would, you know, do their jobs and inform me about the things I care about but haven't heard about yet (Fortunately, young webizen, Daily Show viewer and all, I've got plenty of sources. But it's shocking how many people don't.) They've been given the freedom of the press – freedom to, apparently, churn out reams of dross – for the chance for that one good piece of information to be found amongst the 99 unimportant ones.

So, a story like the “astronaut love triangle” that's been making the rounds makes me sigh. It was all over the airwaves – TV, radio, whatever, yesterday, any show that even remotely touches on the news apparently felt obliged to comment on it. And I heard it again today – it shows no signs of letting up. Really, it's got everything. Crazy behavior, a person brought low, sex, government ineptitude, lurid details, even an awful mugshot. Really, I don't think you could have scripted something better. So, there's not going to be any escaping it until the next shiny story captures the collective attention, I guess. I'm even contributing to keeping the meme alive just trying to say I won't be contributing to it. But, you know, the space program is important. Probably the most important endeavor humanity's ever undertaken (Just, you know, it's going about it in a misguided way. But eventually the sun's going to cool and we're, as a race, going to want to be out of the neighborhood – we're just starting to learn what that's going to take and all.) that it takes something like this to get it in the news is disgusting. And, really, the private tragedy of someone having some rather obvious emotional troubles is none of my business – it's the point to help someone not leer at them.