Several years ago (pre-Iraq war), I discovered Salon.com and started reading everything they had ever printed. Most significantly, I started reading about current events, something I hadn’t done previously. After about two years, though, I couldn’t read current events stories anymore. It was too depressing. It made me too angry. I couldn’t read another story about Bush’s policies or about how he couldn’t even read the teleprompter or use real English words in sentences. About all I could do was watch The Daily Show.
But I know some of you soldiered on. You kept reading the articles – from Salon and the NYT and lots of other media sources. So, now that Obama has already begun unraveling some of Bush’s heinous webs, I’m wondering how it feels to be reading the news these days. I find that I look forward to the news articles and even caught myself watching the news on ABC last night.
Is it terrible of me that when things were really bad, I couldn’t stomach it, but now that the news is reporting the actions of a president I agree with, I’m interested and connected to current events again?
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Yeah. I was thinking the same thought a couple of days ago. I can actually listen to the President speak without having that fingernails on the chalkboard feeling overwhelm me.
To me it is not about having a President that I agree with. I don’t agree with everything that Obama is doing or will do. It is about having a President that is thoughtful, considerate, well-spoken, and not a complete douche bag. I think the elevation of the US rose about 10 feet immediately after the enormous weight of the Bush President was gone. I know I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
BTW – here is a slideshow of the whitehouse.gov website since its inception in 1994, http://www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=white-house-web&thumbs=horizontal&photo_id=008EDB52-95B3-58AF-5C1662FE3606ABCC . It amazing how far it has come since then.
Not terrible. It’s called self-preservation. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do in order to keep the motivation and willpower to keep working on that tiny little corner of the world you’re making better. And that’s good enough.
This is a good point. I haven’t even thought about it I’ve been so busy, but it will definitely be nice to be able to keep up with current events that also involve Presidential speeches. I don’t think I’ve been able to listen to more than 5 words total out of Bushie in the past 6 years.
And, in contrast, I feel less of an imperative to be hypervigilant in my [domestic, not international] news reading. My sigh of relief comes from trusting rational people to make measured decisions to the best of their ability without my personal observation of the gory details.
I wanted to know how the sausage is made when conditions were wretched. Now that they’ve cleaned up the plant, I can put my feet up for a minute or two and enjoy the newfound transparency.
So does this make me an ambulance chaser? : )
I agree with himay here. I have a general trust in the decision making–until they prove me wrong–which provides me a certain ability to not interrogate every little bit.