No News

I'm doing my best NOT to read the Huffington Post. It was a New Year's Resolution. I made it because I found myself reading it every chance I got and the more I read, the more yucky I felt. It appears that everyone has an opinion about everyone else and even though those opinions are often conflicting, the headlines are bold and threatening, warning of dire consequences should one opinion prevail over another.

I started reading the Huffington Post during the last presidential elections. I wanted to follow the polls and the pundits in hopes that my candidate would get elected. Now that he has, the polls and pundits are chronicling his every move and subsequent opinions about his performance beat on the website like an erratic and ailing heart. After reading the posts, I find myself searching for my own feelings and opinions and often can't find them because they're buried under the words of "experts."

Years ago -- before I was a teacher, before I was a dog walker, before most of my life -- I worked in television news. I was a "behind the scenes" worker who coiled up cables, tested microphones, and sent signals back to the news station for LIVE reports. I enjoyed my work, but found it extremely stressful since everyone in the newsroom took their jobs so seriously it was hard to remember that most people weren't glued to a police scanner just waiting for the next disaster.

I decided to leave the news business because I realized - while driving way over the speed limit to a car accident I'd been ordered to so the station I worked for could have "first coverage," - that local television news was about nothing more than paranoia and tragedy. The stories on the morning, afternoon, and evening broadcasts warned about all the things that could go wrong -- faulty wiring in new homes, baby food with potentially hazardous chemicals, diseases that could befall anyone who touched this, ate that, slept here, or vacationed there.

If the stories weren't fueled by fear, they were focused on someone's sorrow. Numerous times it was my job to hold a microphone up to a surviving victim of some heinous crime or worse, the grieving family. I followed reporters who knocked on the doors of the parents of a murdered woman or stand out on chilly nights while the reporter told the tragic story of the "family in the house behind me."

I have a vivid memory of being summoned from my warm bed on an early winter morning to cover the story of a fire in the north end. A husband and wife were found dead in the burned down house and we stood outside waiting for the body bags to emerge because body bags made for good visuals. And so we waited, for hours, because it turned out the husband was a famous artist who had just been sued by his daughter for years of sexual abuse. We didn't know that at the time, nor did the neighbors who set up lawn furniture to watch the action while they ate their breakfasts before heading off to work.

Turns out the daughter had set fire to her parents' house in revenge for all the tragedy her father made of her life and so we spent the next week searching for people who knew the family, who could provide any information. "Did you see this coming?" was a common question followed by "How does it feel to know she did this?"

It was tragic and therefore was the lead story in the 5 o' clock news followed by a story about a dentist who sexually molested his patients.

Depressing. The job was depressing and stressful and so out of touch with reality. Yes, those horrible things happened, but when all you could focus on were the horrible things it was difficult to find any not-horrible things in the world.

That's kind of how I feel about HuffPost. Well-written, articulate analysis that focuses on the problems of the world is, in my humble opinion, no different than poorly written, inarticulate crap focused on the problems of the world -- it's all just focused on the negative and pretty soon, that's all you can see.

So, I've taken to reading food blogs and photography blogs, and postings about rescued dogs. I still listen to NPR because I can tune out what I don't want to hear and at least once every few hours, there's a great story about creativity or music or a funny new play in New York that I'll probably never see.

This week in my classroom, we're taking a brief look at the Civil Rights Movement as a prelude to a new novel we'll be reading. In my introduction to the students I said that to me, history isn't about events or wars -- it's about people and their stories. So we'll be taking a look, I told them, at the individual stories of the 1950s and 60s. Some will be sad, I explained (because their 5th graders and they are moved by sadness), and some will be inspiring. But remember, I added, that people change the course of history and it's their stories that can inspire us to action.

Those are the stories I wish I could read more of on the Huffington Post. Imagine how that might change our outlook on the world around us?