Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Less is More

Some news stories seem to go on and on, long after there's really anything new to cover. Maybe it has to do with 24-hour news channels needing to fill air time. Maybe part of the problem is blogs and their rehashing of news stories. Maybe I'm just cranky and have a short attention span. Whatever the reason, these are some of the recent news stories that I think have gotten too much coverage.

Katie Homes and Tom Cruise - Not news. Period.

Mark Felt - From the story in Vanity Fair to the recent book deal announcement (what a stunning surprise that was!), this one went on way too long. A paragraph or two with just a brief summary of who he is and what he did would have been enough. During Watergate, this would have been news, now it's just a bit of trivia.

Michael Jackson - Does anyone wonder if celebrity trials didn't get as much coverage as they do, would the verdicts be the same? Call it the Heisenberg Trial Effect, the act of observation changes the action. I think the celebrities deserve to have as little attention paid to their trials as any other citizen would get and I deserve not to have to watch meaningless coverage of the trial.

Natalee Holloway - I have a lot of sympathy for her family. Having a child go missing is a parent's nightmare come real. It does deserve news coverage but not to the extent that it's gotten. So far, most of the news stories about the missing teen could be summed up in "there's no news yet". A couple of local bloggers could do as well as all the MSM reporters have.

Gitmo - Mostly I'm tired of the whining about it. If you've complained about those poor detainees down there, if you've compared it to a gulag, if you've compared Bush to Hitler, if you think we live in a facist country, then why are you free to complain? If everything is as bad as you say, you wouldn't have had a chance to complain more than once before being shipped away.

I heard a story on the news recently about Iraqis that have joined the police and the military. They have received threats against them and their families in an effort to get them to quit. This made me think about the claims that some Gitmo detainees are innocent of any relations to terrorism and they were just swept up because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If this were the case, maybe they would prefer to stay uninvolved in terrorist acts against their own countrymen. If the police and military get pressure to ignore terrorism, what kind of pressure would a returning detainee get? Being locked up may not be ideal but if the other choice would be trying to avoid those who want to recruit them to be mobile bombs.... Maybe these "innocents" would prefer that those trying to free them would just shut the hell up.