Surfing the News
If it's ever seemed to you without an immediately obvious reason that all is not well in the world, but there's no major depressing news like a story the size of Hurricane Katrina, I think I can help.
I had a small revelation today (Wed 10-19-05), one of those flashes of insight, as I scanned the front page of USA Today, a publication I'll read for free but not if I have to pay for it.
Headline: Teenagers redefining sex...Seemingly casual acceptance of oral sex perplexes parents, fuels concerns of an intimacy crisis in new generation.
Headline: Errors, gaps, cloud athletic spending
Headline: 1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return.
Let's take the first two headlines together: what's the common thread that ties them together?
If you said "changing values," you're right on the money. While the sex story is designed to titillate younger readers and annoy older ones, is it really front page news? It sure is, when you've got one, maybe two other stories that come from the same stew (not even including the latest on Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers).
Spending on sports in high school and college is outpacing spending on academics. The problem is that the numbers of graduates who are capable of finding work other than as players in pro sports are far greater than the bodies who in fact do become big-name sports stars. Shouldn't the dollar values in this case be reversed?
"Redefining sex" is a totally B.S. expression. You're straight or you're gay. That's pretty much it on that count. "Intimacy crisis" is nothing more than a change in attitude; nobody is redefining anything. What this is all about is the fact that young people today have access to so much information from so many sources, it seems like there's some major shift in thinking in America. It's more a matter of intensity than redefining anything.
Just like schools spending more on sports than on studies, so to speak.
And the Big Story, 1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return? In the middle of the story, the 28% figure is explained by USA Today saying that those servicemembers "returned with problems ranging from lingering battle wounds to toothaches, from suicidal thoughts to strained marriages." One other statistic quoted is that 47% saw someone wounded or killed or saw a dead body.
What I'd like to know is the number of battle wounds versus toothaches, and the logic of putting both "ailments" in the same phrase....and the numbers of suicidal thoughts and strained marriages that were actually voiced from other wars....and the number of just plain civikians who were "ailing" for days, weeks, even months, after seeing one or both planes fly into the twin towers.
And people continue to insist the mainstream media doesn't have a liberal agenda. All you have to do surf the front page of the news on a day when there's no single dominant story and judge for yourself.
Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog
If it's ever seemed to you without an immediately obvious reason that all is not well in the world, but there's no major depressing news like a story the size of Hurricane Katrina, I think I can help.
I had a small revelation today (Wed 10-19-05), one of those flashes of insight, as I scanned the front page of USA Today, a publication I'll read for free but not if I have to pay for it.
Headline: Teenagers redefining sex...Seemingly casual acceptance of oral sex perplexes parents, fuels concerns of an intimacy crisis in new generation.
Headline: Errors, gaps, cloud athletic spending
Headline: 1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return.
Let's take the first two headlines together: what's the common thread that ties them together?
If you said "changing values," you're right on the money. While the sex story is designed to titillate younger readers and annoy older ones, is it really front page news? It sure is, when you've got one, maybe two other stories that come from the same stew (not even including the latest on Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers).
Spending on sports in high school and college is outpacing spending on academics. The problem is that the numbers of graduates who are capable of finding work other than as players in pro sports are far greater than the bodies who in fact do become big-name sports stars. Shouldn't the dollar values in this case be reversed?
"Redefining sex" is a totally B.S. expression. You're straight or you're gay. That's pretty much it on that count. "Intimacy crisis" is nothing more than a change in attitude; nobody is redefining anything. What this is all about is the fact that young people today have access to so much information from so many sources, it seems like there's some major shift in thinking in America. It's more a matter of intensity than redefining anything.
Just like schools spending more on sports than on studies, so to speak.
And the Big Story, 1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return? In the middle of the story, the 28% figure is explained by USA Today saying that those servicemembers "returned with problems ranging from lingering battle wounds to toothaches, from suicidal thoughts to strained marriages." One other statistic quoted is that 47% saw someone wounded or killed or saw a dead body.
What I'd like to know is the number of battle wounds versus toothaches, and the logic of putting both "ailments" in the same phrase....and the numbers of suicidal thoughts and strained marriages that were actually voiced from other wars....and the number of just plain civikians who were "ailing" for days, weeks, even months, after seeing one or both planes fly into the twin towers.
And people continue to insist the mainstream media doesn't have a liberal agenda. All you have to do surf the front page of the news on a day when there's no single dominant story and judge for yourself.
Listen Here for the audio version of today's George Blog
posted by George Woods | 6:00 AM
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