Take Out the Trash

Yikes it's hot out! I think I'm the last person remaining in DC, the rest of the city has gone to cooler climes, the beach, Congress to their home states for campaigning, and so the only people who remain here with me, are the service staff to the rich and powerful. And I think Hillary Clinton is still here, she picked up a part-time job giving tours at the White House to pay off her campaign debt. It's really quiet here, but it's not a peaceful quiet, DC has the feeling of an abandoned city, maybe one where the citizens all ran off to escape the plague.

But if it's noise I want, I can just turn on my favorite cable news station, and depending on what sort of noise I want to hear, there are a few different flavors. Right wing noise, left wing noise, sports noise, it's all there and easily found with the press of a remote, there's no need for me to even get up off of the couch (which is a good thing, because it's so hot, I just don't feel like moving. I did actually move this morning, to turn the thermostat down, and to remove all of my clothing, except my pink boxers and a t-shirt, and all day since then, I have been hoping that no one rings the doorbell, because there's no way I'm opening the door to let in the oppressive humidity, and besides, I would have to scramble to get dressed, I'm not going to answer the door in pink boxers...). So what is a gurl to do, when going outside is a danger to her health?

Cable TV.

I guess Keith Olbermann and Dana Milbank have had a falling out of sorts. There are un-written rules about who you can trash on Cable TV. On Fox, you're allowed to trash Democrats, on CNN, depending on which time slot, you can trash nearly anyone, on MSNBC, you can trash Republicans and some Democrats, but you can never trash Obama, or say that there is any anti-Clinton bias in the media. Since news has become a shooting gallery of the prominent people in the spotlight, and trash has become the norm, rather than the exception, eventually, doesn't it all just become trash? It's confusing, but we all pick our particular flavor of news, we all choose what we watch, we all have our newspapers that we like to read, and we avoid the ones that make us want to tear at our hair. At some point, you just scratch your head and wonder, which trash is true? Because eventually, the media gets around to trashing everyone. Does Hillary really want Obama to be assassinated? Does Obama really think he's the symbol of change, and that the world is waiting for him? When John McCain said he thought we'd be in Iraq for a hundred years, did he literally mean a hundred years, or just a shorter period of time that seems like a hundred years, like the Bush Presidency? Did Dennis Kucinich really see a UFO?

Of all of the truths that I wonder about, I find the Dennis Kucinich UFO sighting the most plausible.

Maybe the reason that there is bias and sensationalism in the news today, is because we all demand it. It is possible that we all have become so partisan, and polarised, that we have ourselves created this slant, only wanting to hear what we want to be true. We don't watch the news we don't want to hear, we tailor our viewing to suit our ideals, and maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. I don't know about you, but I have this tendency to question everything I read in the papers, and always have to verify something I hear with a few different news outlets. The thing is, I guess I just don't know what's true anymore. With all of the trash that we allow ourselves to take for truth, who knows anymore? I know that I thought that when I bought the Better Than Botox anti-aging cream for my face with super anti-oxidants, I believed that I was going to look just like the picture of the 22 year old on the box. I believed it, because I really wanted it to be true. I really wanted to look like the 22 year old, so I paid $120 American dollars for a cream that looked like lumpy pesto sauce, (and for all I know, it might have really been lumpy pesto sauce) and I smeared it on my face and let it sit for 2 hours. And while I am still waiting for my skin to take the time travel machine back twenty-some years, I have this feeling that the makers of this particular anti-aging serum are yanking my chain, and that I have no way of knowing if the miracle treatment I pasted on my face was actually pesto sauce.

The thing about trash is that if we buy into it, the makers of trash will always have more to sell us. The more we buy, the more they will sell us. And eventually, everything on the market will be trash, and we will never know the difference.

I am still trying to scrub the green stuff out of the lines in my forehead.

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