Civic Duty?

This morning in a bit of sleepy stupor, I subjected myself to an extended and extremely asinine segment on a network morning news show about the split between Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston or whatever the hell his name is. And now, writing this, I must restrain myself from subjecting the reader to unending profanity. Not only am I offended that our journalistic institutions consider this news worthy at all, but I am also unnerved and terrified that these media-baffoons actually had "experts" on their show to give critique! And the experts had nothing intelligent to say! Because what would they say? They were powerless to disguise the absurdity of what they were doing.

I had fully intended to update this blog on a regular basis. And certainly there's enough going on in the realm of politics to give me a plethora of things to criticize. And yet I still felt uninspired for several months. It's quite plain why, since when I actually turn on the news, stupidity slaps me in the face. I stopped caring.

That hasn't changed. But I have begun to wonder why it has been that way. The answer is probably as old as politics itself. Disillusionment. And that's a phenomenon that's bound to go in and out of my mind, or anyone's mind, like the tide. Of course, I never believed in any way that writing a blog would change anything in even the smallest way. Rather, my growing apathy is rooted in the perpetual sameness of our government during a time when I was expecting great change. If the economy still has to suck, then let me see some daring change in how finance operates. If we can barely handle an oil spill, then let me see some concrete movement towards sustainable energy. We just get placating incremental efforts.

I sometimes don't know what I want from the news, because often I'm not interested enough to warrant more than a glance at Google headlines. And yet news-media often proves that this is about as much attention as they deserve. Its quite a thrill to stumble on an article of investigative journalism, but how often do those pieces really get the attention they deserve?

So what I do know I want is a paradigm shift in the political sphere and in the journalistic sphere. Journalists should stop pandering to the public and tell us some hard truth and not hide behind "objectivity." Government needs to get its hands out of the pockets of big business and focus on the citizens it serves. These are two big and vague statements. They're also two things that won't happen and it is a symptom of the problems that I don't even feel inclined to say anymore to help make my own point.