Thursday, December 1, 2016

Same Here

John Cole at Balloon Juice and I are on the same page.

…I just can’t keep up with the news. I quit watching cable tv and honestly have not even TUNED to CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or even any of the broadcast news shows or Sunday programs since the election, and have basically just been reading newspapers and websites. And it’s impossible to keep up with what Trump is doing because 95% of the stuff that comes out of his campaign is just pure bullshit.

My drive to and from work has been to the serious jazz on WDNA in Miami and at the office I’m streaming classical music from Interlochen Public Radio out of northern Michigan.  (I used to stream CBC Radio 2 but they went commercial and so the stream is blocked in the U.S.)  I have a full TiVo schedule of good and guilty-pleasure TV (“NCIS” to “Timeless” to “Mom”) and a subscription to Netflix which has me catching up with the goings-on in the Bartlet administration and the history of the British royal family.

But like John and a lot of my fellow pixel-chasing wretches in the Blogosphere, I read newspapers and websites, not all left-wing and not always political commentary.  I’ve kept up with my creative writing by submitting to both local and national playwriting opportunities.  With the holidays — all of them — practically at our throats, it’s time to plan for my trip to visit my parents over the Christmas weekend and help others plan their celebrations as well as think about what to do while school is out.

I’m not going to completely ignore the impending Trump apocalypse.  But I’m not going to rise to the clickbait, either.  So a half-term governor of Alaska is being considered for a cabinet post.  Yes, that calls for both horrified mirth and rafter-shaking rage, but like a loud fart at a cocktail party you just have to endure the shame and hope that the damage is slight.

4 barks and woofs on “Same Here

  1. Now I’m about ready to abandon Rachel, for the my mental health. I need some sort of Buddhist training to get control of my brain. I wake up around 3:00 for the usual old-age reason and then, mission accomplished, can’t get back to sleep. This entire catastrophe of an election and now the transition goes around and around in my head and we haven’t even gotten to the disaster in Afghanistan that’s ominously, certainly pending, or the news of dissidents in China disappearing, or the utter destruction of what used to be Syria, all the while our ADLD President-to-be tweets.

  2. I too quit watching the cable stuff and can barely get through the evening news. Even the local stations are running stories about Trump, so I go and make an unnecessary pit stop to avoid having a stroke or something! Misery loves company, so thanks to all the writers here who let me know that I am not alone.

  3. I am with all of you. I am a news junkie. I cannot watch it since the election. I do go to websites. I found myself watching the Food Network the other day just to find something to be background noise.

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