...When All is Said and Dunn

I am a news junkie. I watch the news all of the time and to quite honest I don’t know how I got to be this way. Even when I’m in my office, I have on CNN or the local news.

Every once in a while I have a self-imposed boycott of the news. It usually occurs when it seems the world is spinning out of control. Sometimes I need to step back and take a breath because there are so many insane things going on. I guess it’s a lot like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. If I don’t hear or see it, it’s not happening.

Then, as most junkies will do, I bow to temptation, switch the channel, and I am hooked once again. As if to punish me, the news gods raise the level of lunacy just to make me cringe or at least it seems so.

One of these boycotts occurred just a few days ago. When I turned the news back on, it was as though a series of demons had been released from hell. Sort of like a bad episode, if that’s possible, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As story after story was read, I was either shocked by the cruelty or dumbfounded by the stupidity.

The first thing that CNN threw in my face was that a man and woman in Florida and 100 other people were arrested for operating a worldwide children's pornography ring on the Internet. The man and woman could face up to 1000 years each in prison, which just doesn’t seem long enough. Considering how many young lives they helped to destroy they should get the death penalty.

Next was not one, but three hit and run deaths. Of course they had to involve young mothers and children, people whose greatest crime was attempting to cross the street or getting too close to one.

Then there was the young mother who was shot and killed by a stray bullet when rival gangs decided to have a shoot out in the street in front of her house. After the gunfire began she helped her father off of the porch and into the house. After she saved her father, she was hit in the back of the neck with a bullet and died, leaving her husband and 8-year-old child behind to mourn.

Why is it we never hear about a rapist, pedophile, or crack dealer getting hit by a car while crossing the street or being hit by a stray bullet? That would be a public service and should be treated as such. The DMV should deduct points from your driving record for taking out one of the aforementioned. I’m not sure what the gun toting gang member should get, maybe knock a day or two off the next 25 year sentence he gets convicted of, just as an atta-boy for taking out some trash.

How about the international news from Russia. Apparently, over the last 4 months, 13,590 people have died from alcohol poisoning from drinking Russia’s national drink and number one export, vodka. I’m sorry, but what the hell were these people doing, bathing in the stuff? Is there something wrong with the distilling process or the purity of Russian vodka? If so, then why are people paying outrageous prices for it over here?

And speaking of alcohol, there was the drunken mother who went inside her house to take a nap, and somehow forgot to take her 2 young children out of the car. With temperatures reaching over 110 degrees inside the car, they also died. What kind of parent forgets their children in the car? I am sure she is experiencing massive amounts of remorse. But remorse will never bring her children back and she will have plenty of time to reflect on that while she rots in prison.

If it sounds as though there was no good news being reported, you’re right. Even the stories that were interlaced with the really bad stuff left you numb. I must have had the look on my face of someone who had just been hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat. Thank you Mr. Capone. May I have another?

Mariah Carey just got out of the hospital for whatever the hell she was in there for. So what. Ben Affleck is going into rehab. Sorry Ben, but it could be worse, you could have been drinking Russian vodka. Marion “Suge” Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, was released from prison after 5 years. Oh boy, let’s throw a party! Just tell me where it’s going to be so I can be far, far away. All of these “news stories” should have been mentioned during the entertainment report. If this was an effort to take the sting out of the other news, they failed miserably.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know which way to go. I can either be burdened with all of the depressing news that is out there or become an uninformed member of society, which is to be basically a useless member. I guess I’ll have to go with the first choice and hope that things get better.

Oh sorry, I forgot the worst news of all, George W. Bush is still president.

The Shrub Speaks: “Russia is no longer our enemy and therefore we shouldn’t be locked into a Cold War mentality that says we keep the peace by blowing each other up. In my attitude, that’s old, that’s tired, that’s stale.” -- Des Moines, Iowa June 8, 2001