All News, All the Time

It's the only television I watch.

I can't be bothered with any of the new sitcoms and dramas that have premiered in the 2024-25 season, and I can't even name one.  As for other shows that have returned from the previous season, well, I haven't watched any of them either.  For the past several months, with the exception of the odd PBS documentary, I have only watched the news programs on MSNBC - mainly Nicolle Wallace, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki (whom I must put on my beautiful-women picture blog), Katie Phang (ditto), and the Reverend Al Sharpton, as well as "The Weekend."  I keep watching for any good news, no matter how thin a sliver it may be, about the Harris campaign at a time when pundits are second-guessing her and critiquing her outreach efforts toward the voters she needs to win in November.  

I can't stop watching the news and analyzing the polls for as long as I remain unsure of how the election will turn out.  It's all about the campaign.  I don't even have time to watch the BBC News America report weeknights on PBS.  If I learn of any famous celebrity deaths, it's usually on the Internet, and I probably learned about more celebrity passings than I would have if I were still watching the PBS NewsHour.  

Why am I torturing myself like this?  Because I want to know if I get tortured by the Trump 47 administration if such an administration actually comes to pass.  See, I've been on my own since January.  I had a lot of plans for my life after I ended up on my own, but apart from adopting two kittens, I haven't realized them.  I'm in a holding pattern as I watch the latest news on the 2024 presidential election because, if Trump wins, it's game over as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, I still think it.  Trump will not only make himself a dictator if re-elected, he'll set up a system to opporess, incarcerate, and, yes, execute anyone who opposes him.  First he'll come for the press and the pundits, then he'll come for Democrats, then he'll come for state and local governments to root out anti-MAGA public officeholders, and eventually - perhaps somewhere in between - he'll come for bloggers who have spoken out against him.

That would include me.  

I can't make any long-term plans if living in a free and democratic America is a short-term deal.  I can't plan a trip to Europe for 2025, because either Trump will make emigration illegal or because I might have to plan on doing more than just visiting Europe.  I have to get ready to leave the country if necessary, and what research I've done in how to do that does not reassure me.  It can be so difficult that I might have to stay in America.  And if Trump is back in office, it will be an America where MSNBC is off the air. 

It shouldn't be hard for the Trump 47 authorities to find me.   In my area, there are numerous Trump lawn signs, and I put a Harris sign outside my door as a sign of defiance.

And I'm sure there will be many an informer to aid the Trump secret police to root out the rot.

I am probably a dead man already.  😱

Back to the News

Well, it seems I'm going once more into the breach.

Since my January 15 post, I started watching TV news more often, but still not as much as I used to.  I've begun watch the BBC's American newscast again - but not every weeknight, only sporadically, as the broadcast usually concerns itself with one or two stories at the expense of everything else - and while I watch Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC program, I don't watch it every night like I used to, and I'll watch Chris Hayes or Alex Wagner - or Rachel Maddow on Mondays - when I feel like it, and I don't always feel like it.  (And after watching "Deadline: White House" on MSNBC a few times, I've decided that I won't watch it again until Nicolle Wallace finally comes back.)  As always, though Jen Psaki on MSNBC and Ian Bremmer on PBS remain appointment television.  If I want to keep up with the headline news, though, I'll turn to AM news radio.

And - I've actually begun watching "Morning Joe" on MSNBC regularly - mostly for its entertainment value. 😄

What made me wade back into the news media pool?  Well, I have to have some knowledge of what's going on in the world.  Even if the press only does cover 20 percent of it.  

Meanwhile, David Soul, Charles Osgood, Glynis Johns, Melanie, Carl Weathers and Chita Rivera all died in January.  And I suspect that Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett on the PBS NewsHour could only be bothered to report only one or two of those obituaries. 😠  After all, none of these people were rappers.

Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Off

I'm watching less and less news on TV these days.

Attentive readers of this blog will know that I stopped watching the PBS NewsHour broadcast because its news reports were getting too dry and staid and because its stories on arts and culture were getting too politically correct with far too many stories on hip-hop - and because Amna Nawaz can't stop acting like an anchorwoman on the local news in Eau Claire, Wisconsin or some place like that.  So I started watching public television broadcast of the BBC's World News America half-hour report.

As with the PBS NewsHour, I started out watching the BBC program every weekday.  Then Hamas attacked Israel.   Now all the program does is report extensively and exclusively on the war in Gaza at the expense of practically everything else.   Now I only watch it once in  a blue moon.  Ironically, I stopped watching it every weekday to make time for programs on MNSBC - Chris Hayes's, Alex Wagner's, et. al. - to find out about the progress of getting Trump held accountable for his various crimes.  (Everything I watch on TV I watch on DVR to skip through the commercials.)  Now I'm starting to skip over even that.  Because the news about Trump is getting too depressing - i.e., he's going to delay his criminal trials, he's going to win back the White House next year, he's going to be a dictator, and when the authorities find my blog, I will be arrested and subsequently executed for calling Trump a moron.  (Labor camps in North Dakota are more likely to be used for lesser crimes, such as murder, assault, or women wearing pantsuits.  I'm not joking about the last one - women in Chile under Pinochet could be punished for wearing clothes that downplayed their femininity, like trousers.) 

I pretty much stopped watching CNN, for various reasons (*cough cough*, Tia Mitchell, *cough cough*, CNN contributor, *cough cough*), and if I watch any news program regularly at all these days, it's Jen Psaki's on MSNBC - and she's only on twice a week.  Or Ian Bremmer's PBS foreign-policy talk show "GZero World," which is on only once a week.  Or CBS's "60 Minutes," on only once a week.  If I catch anything else on TV news, it's because my mother has the TV on and I happen to be in the room at the time.

So what else do I watch on TV?  Not much.  Maybe a movie, if I can find one I want to see.  In fact, I saw an old movie on YouTube this past weekend by renting it.  The only current sitcom I watched on broadcast TV was "American Auto," and NBC had to go and cancel it.

Besides, most of the interesting stuff on TV these days is on channels I don't have access to.   That means I get to spend more time mouthing off here.  And uploading content on Flickr and YouTube.

Ahh, who cares?  If television was a vast wasteland in Newton Minow's day, it's not much better now.  But the most wasteful of this vast wasteland remains the news broadcast, not necessarily for the glibness of the anchors and commentators or the packaging of op-ed programs as entertainment, but for the whole narrative-based approach to reporting, the idea that every ongoing news story is a tale which has a simple progression and a neat outcome that allows the media to go on to something else afterwards.  Good thing I preferred being a print, not a broadcast, reporter, and it's easy to see why a one-time broadcast reporter I am connected to on Facebook gave up that job for a career in something more meaningful - real estate.

"Turn Off the TV!"

The Derek Chauvin trial - as I now properly and accurately call it - just entered its silly phase with so-called experts as witnesses for the defense explaining that George Floyd did not die at Chauvin's hands but rather died due to possible drug abuse, maybe exhaust from the car he was next to as Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd's neck, or a whole bunch of other crazy possible causes that no one would take seriously.  And all this goes on as another police shooting in Minnesota, in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center - the killing of Daunte Wright - was committed by a white female police officer who apparently can't tell the difference between a pistol and a Taser, which is sort of like being unable to tell the difference between a Rolls-Royce and a Mini.

So once again, I'm nauseated by trigger-happy cops even as social justice becomes more out of reach in this country.  I turn on the news to hear some news about COVID - crossing my fingers that it will be hopeful (it usually isn't, except in the ironic sense) - and I see instead more police killings that appall everyone and more angry protests that resolve nothing.  The only good thing about all this is that it's helped me break my addiction to cable news.  I don't even miss watching Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, a channel I stopped watching otherwise to minimize my exposure to Laurie Garrett.  (Unfortunately, Michael Osterholm an still be found on almost every news program.)  I'm pretty much down to watching the PBS NewsHour; otherwise, I'd rather be busy with something else. Because if I keep watching the news for more than an hour in the evening as a soul-sucking pandemic continues, I will go insane.

If I haven't already.