A Brief Rant from a News Viewer

I would really like to write something witty about current affairs for a change, but the brain wants to go on a rant today, especially at the  omnipresent "Breaking News" ticker plastered like Band-Aid across the bottom of each and every news channel I open these days. Not to give you the false impression that I am a qualified expert on such matters though. Not for me the morning breakfast show, nor the matinee slot with the afternoon cuppa and certainly not the prime time telecasts with hyper-charged anchors and panelists who wreak havoc on the poor unsuspecting tables beneath their emphatic palms (rather like the flimsy tables that keep breaking at the drop of a hat on those wrestling shows that I watch inspite of being a grown-up and responsible tax-payer). I am but a dilettante, a butterfly if you may that skips from flower to flower, sipping but never partaking of my fill at just one place. And news channels rank slightly above mushrooms on that totem pole. But I do look in once in a while, and I don't like what I see much.

There is always an impassioned issue and equally impassioned personages discoursing heatedly on that issue. There is always a blow-by-blow, minute-after-minute, Botox-plus-Botox cacophony which somehow numbs me into a blankness that no emotion permeates. Probably my malfunction this, but the information overload just gets too much to bear after a point of time, post which I switch off completely and turn to a double espresso and studied cynicism about the world around me. Politicians suck, athletes dope, businessmen cheat and celebrities cavort. That is my worldview now, barring a few instances that give rise to a little flutter of hope before that also gets crushed under the overwhelming bilge surrounding it. I know I pontificate from a shaky podium at best; I am no saint that is guaranteed a green card to St. Peter's gates (or Indra's gilded halls if I stay true to the religion I was born with). I am a common man with common foibles and bellyaches about a faithless immoral world that doesn't give the common man a break. I am Joe Nobody, whose brains are moulded by the latest fibre optic network in vogue. I would probably have an aneurysm if you told me to come up with an original thought. But I am also increasingly worried by my increasing nonchalance and lack of concern for shit that is going on around me. Rather than wading in knee deep in it I am cooly sipping a Mai Tai and watching the few who give a damn struggle with the ginormous task of cleaning up the plumbing.

About time I lent a hand innit? Walk the walk and all. I am doing that, bit by slothful bit. I hope Newtonian physics will take over at some point of time and some decent momentum will be achieved. I hope some day I can actually make some tangible infinitesimal difference to another electron at least. Till then I will watch my fellow countrymen get airlifted one by one into helicopters and wonder why the hell so much havoc could not be prevented. I will probably watch this latest reality show on mute though. Any more of the accusations and counter-accusations and I will probably have an epileptic fit.