Coastline Pilot

November 1, 2002

 

“Chasing the Muse”

by Catharine Cooper

 

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

–      Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

I’ve stopped watching and listening to the news.  It shocked me to realize that it’s been months since I sat before the television screen to watch Dan Rather and his cohorts.  Me, an information junkie, and I had turned off.

 

When and why did this happen?  Sometime, as I recall, after September eleventh, when our national sense of security was irreparably altered, and the telecast replay mode got stuck on forever.  The result of the continued review of horrors is a kind of psychic numbing.  The more I see of that which is intolerable, the less I am able to feel.  My sense of outrage remained, but it becomes an intellectual exercise.

 

What I want is to know more.  More than what the mega-corporate news machines spew forth in a real time cacophony of events.  More about the why – reached through deductive reasoning – and less about the minute-by-minute details and their accompanying sound bites.

 

If I were to believe only what is broadcast, I’d have to conclude that the world is a pretty awful place to be.  And I just don’t find that to be true.

 

On any given day, in most of the world, folks go about their lives, just like you and me.  They get up, have some coffee, drop their kids at school, go to work and set about a daily routine.  In the evening, they reverse the outgo and come home to the family – whatever structure that assumes.  Teens work out angst and hang with friends.  Kids tear up the house and drag wagons down the street.  In most of the world.

 

That isn’t to say that there isn’t terrible and abundant grief.  There is.  There are sick people within our global population that feel empowered to subjugate, terrorize and murder other human beings.  If my history studies are intact, there has always been a faction which I can refer to as evil, and there may well always be.  But the shock-value snippets from broadcast news, reduce the world of information to a feeding frenzy of fear – just the kind of fear that Roosevelt was suggesting.

 

What happened to educated personal analysis?  What happened to reading, digesting and discussing the news?  What happened to dialog?  And I don’t mean the interviews of the Larry King, or the shouting matches on Cross Fire.  Although, I’ll admit, they provoke a great deal more pondering than the 6:00 news.  But again, it’s passive information.  One garnered by watching or listening to a machine programmed by large corporations.  I don’t mean to sound Orwellian, but just who does decide what and when is the right information? And when did the news start having stars?  Hair coiffed, makeup perfect – in the face of fire storms and bombings. 

 

Thank God for the newspapers - all of them.  And for the magazines – what’s left of them (even if they are mostly owned by the same folks that owned the broadcast stations) - and for the growth of research options via the internet.  At least, utilizing the skill of reading, there is an opportunity to delve beyond the headlines and experience a point of view that may be as personal or as objective as the author chooses. 

 

As I write this, four fighter planes have flown overhead.  I hate the fact that I immediately am filled a fear that something awful has happened and planes are leaving Camp Pendleton.  I could rush to the TV – but I won’t – at least until my beloved Angels are to start game number seven.  But wait – those jets.  Those ARE the ANGELS jets.  It is the beginning of the last game of the World Series.  I can turn on the set and have a real time experience that is pleasurable. 

 

The point?  The media keeps winning.  We are living more and more in fear, because every day the cameras focus on something more grievous than the day before.  As an antidote, I prescribe a walk in the wilderness park, sunset in front of seal rock, a local high school athletic event and/or a huge family hug combined with some personal investigation into the underpinnings of the world.  Let’s make of our lives some good news.

 

Catharine Cooper is a local writer/photographer who thrives on off-beaten trails.  She can be reached at 949 497 5081 or email:  ccooper@cooperdesign.net.