Notes from a Newsbreak

I am a news junkie.

In a typical day I will read The NY Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, the CNN site, Alternet, Huffington Post, Politico, Yahoo News and watch Hardball, Countdown and Rachel Maddow. Then I might watch The Daily Show. Often I read the Daily News on the subway.

Lately this has become a problem.

That's because the news is so terrible these days. Rather than read the details about February's dismal job numbers, I have decided to pull back--make an attempt at seeing if "out of sight, out of mind" might actually help to improve my mood.

So far, so good.

I am also a fan of old magazines. During my newsbreak I was looking through a Time magazine from September of 1964 and noticed the following, which I had never known: during this week, less than a year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, there were television premieres of "Bewitched", "The Addams Family", "Flipper", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Mr. Magoo". Is it any wonder why network television held all the marbles back then? Not to be too badly outclassed, in theaters that week were "A Hard Day's Night" and "Night of the Iguana".

Goldwater was running against Johnson. Hubert Humphrey was a brash young up-and-comer. Youths had rioted at Seaside Oregon and crime was headed up dramatically almost everywhere.

Last night I also watched three submarine movies in a row on Turner Classic Movies. I was trying to think of something that didn't have the words "stock market" and "tanking" in it--and thanks to William Holden, Rock Hudson and Clark Gable, I was able to do so.

My advice for these fun-filled times: stop looking. Go about your work. Feel good about yourself. This too shall pass--probably sooner than you can imagine. After all, even though every sentient adult in the United States is currently feeling like they have a spike driven through their head on account of the economy, at some point our native insatiability for goods and services is going to kick in and we will be firing up the markets again.

In the meantime, here's to cluelessness.

--Renaissance