Counter Point

Oleg read my last post and said that while he found it well written, he completely disagreed with me.  After we talked for a while, he concluded that we were on the same page about the media as a whole, but that he didn't think I conveyed a few things.  Here are those things.

1.  While I don't make a point of sitting down in front of the nightly news every evening (two points for alliteration!) I'm nevertheless aware of what's going on in the world.  I get information through various channels (mostly my thoughtful and more informed friends who talk to me about things--which means I manage to get the same news as everyone else, only minus the commentator blah blah blahs--but I also occasionally read internet news and Mother Jones (what, what!) and, of course, you can't miss the big events when you use Twitter as much as I now do).

2.  I'm not anti-being-informed, nor am I trying to lay down a patina of justifications to promote aggressive ignorance.  I think it's good to know what's going on around you, but I don't like the obsessing over it, or the compulsive, indiscriminate consumption of information.  I also think it's interesting to take a step back and consider why as a society (and world) it's so much more acceptable to behave this way toward information that is deemed "important" vs. information that is deemed superficial.  Like I said to Oleg, if I'm some shallow idiot who spends the majority of my time in a pedicure chair, can you really tell me that Karzai is more relevant to my life than Heidi?

3.  I don't feel very strongly about any of this.  This is probably the point that gets most clearly lost because I made a hefty argument in one direction (rather than bandying the points back and forth in a vague, inconclusive way).  I listened to NPR (and btw, that wasn't the first time I've ever listened to NPR...I just don't have my radio perpetually tuned to it, like some people (cough cough, Oleg, cough)) for about a month, off and on, and that post was the result of my main impression, which is point 2: I'm not sure I buy into the concept of one type of obsessive media involvement being more valid than another.  But I don't have any problem with NPR, and maybe (since it did work alright as a thing to do while knitting) I'll keep listening to it.

But just as likely, maybe not.