all the news that's fit to ignore

so i’m pretty much fed up with people getting extraordinary news coverage for stuff which is not particularly unusual. robert blake, scott peterson, joan binet-ramsey, the brain-dead feeding-tube lady. i hate these people. they are not special. they’re just rich or white or good-looking. i don’t care who they are or what they did. just like i don’t care specifically about the thousands of equally “interesting” human interest/tragedy stories happening everyday in the world. just like i don’t care how many americans were on a plane that crashed in indonesia. i didn’t know them, why is it more of a tragedy that they were from this country? isn’t it still tragic if the were from indonesia?

so-and-so was marginally famous? incredible, i must know every detail of their impending trial. he was rich but threw it all away in a moment of dread horror? wonderful, i will read about this every day in the newspaper and imagine what it would be like if i was rich and a criminal.

it bothers me when the thing going on is supposed to be “thought-provoking,” like this schivo woman is supposed to be. sure it’s thought provoking...if you are actually involved. otherwise you shouldn’t care. it’s none of your business. who doesn’t have an opinion on euthanasia already? or worse yet: so-called “important” people who commit regular crimes, especially when “important” means “i’ve never heard of them.” like the whole "they had a perfect life, it’s so awful that this kind of thing happened to them.” murders are supposed to happen to ghetto people? what’s the fucking difference who it is or how great their life was beforehand? and this isn’t even the whole racism/classism complaint that people always have, it’s more of a “why would i want to know about them?” which is really just my regular problem with news anyway: if it’s not happening to people i know and it isn’t intrinsically interesting somehow why would i want to know about it? they might just be making the whole broadcast up, i would never know.

that said, i still felt a whole lot safer when martha stewart was in jail.