Catching up with news and events after the holiday break has been difficult because it all seems so overwhelming: the looming shadow of the new Bush administration and the start of the congressional term; the nomination of the odious Alberto Gonzales as Democrats roll over yet again; the horror of the tsunami in South Asia; the mind-numbing violence in Iraq. And those are just the headlines. One hardly knows where to start.
But since we have to start somewhere:
Is it just my imagination, or has all this heartstring-plucking, button-pushing reporting on the tsunami disaster become more than a little grotesque? See the videos of screaming tourists fleeing the oncoming wave! (Guess which ones made it and which didn't.) See the devastated but cute orphans clutching their bottled water! I don't mean to diminish in any way the scope of this tragedy--but this is voyeurism, not news. It's not helping us to understand how and why this happened--the poverty that pushes people into areas that aren't safe to live in, the degrading of the coastal environment, the reckless development. It's disaster pornography, an artificial heightening of emotion that reassures us that we can still feel something--at least until we change the channel, or until the next celebrity murder trial.
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