Thursday, July 8, 2010

Today's Top Stories (enter any online "news" network here)


Common cancer believe shattered in study
Style Winners and Losers
Province might lower auto insurance rates
Charlie Sheen heading back to jail
‘Survivor’ producer wanted for murder
The ultimate fat-burning outdoor workout


Seriously? Those are the top headlines in a world fraught with war, poverty and destruction. We are a sick, sick people who lead ourselves into our own extinction.

Or at least I hope we will.

I’m horrified at those headlines and I have to admit that for the most part, I gloss over the page the opens when my internet browser does. I don’t find it ‘local’ or ‘interesting’ so I just gloss over. But the first headline caught my attention this morning – breast cancer always is a headline grabber so I thought I should read the report. It wasn’t until I had that screen open that the other ‘headlines’ flashed up.

I’m ok with ‘entertainment’ news but of the six headlines, only one is a ‘serious’ news report. Are we that ignorant to the world around us that we can no longer digest the real world news? We’ve become enamored with Hollywood and Hollywood culture. Who doesn’t want to be a star these days?

I admit the fame and the fortune are incredibly appealing to me as well – I don’t want to trudge on the train and bus to work anymore than the other 50 people packed into the subway car headed to meager paying jobs that consume more of our life than any other activity but I’m enough of a realist to know that I will never be famous, I will never be a fashionista, I will never be anyone but the rapidly approaching middle age, married mother of one who has a nice house in an older part of town.

And that is why I don’t care what Angelina is wearing or what scandal some reality show contestant got themselves involved in. Whether this diet or that one will ‘melt fat from my middle’ and I really don’t care how to “copy” Lara’s style (who is this Lara and why should I care?).

What I do care about is the little kid who got run over yesterday and the new mom sitting alone at her tiny apartment trying to cope with a screaming newborn with no support. I care about the guy who picks bottles in my back alley early on Sunday morning and the people I see living on the concrete sidewalk as my train whizzes through the poorest part of my city. And perhaps – just maybe – if more of us actually took the time to care about what was happening in our own backyards instead of what is happening thousands of kilometers away in TomKat’s backyard, we could make a difference.

Or perhaps we’ll be extinct first.

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