By Claire Parsons
Any news is good news
Every week I scour the Internet in search of the perfect topic to discuss in my columns. Because I have such high journalistic standards, this process can take as many as five minutes. Lately, however, I’ve noticed a rise in the amount of time I spend searching for topics and a sharp drop in the quality of topics available. This week, I spent as much as twenty minutes, a third of an hour mind you, trying to find something worth complaining about. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in my quest.
What, then, am I to whine about this week? I thought you’d never ask. My rant this week should be obvious by now, but this is U of L so allow me to explain. There is nothing going on and that really, really sucks. Where has all the news gone? When I go to my favorite news sites I expect to see interesting or at least weirdly amusing news stories, but lately I’m getting nothing. It’s getting ridiculous, and somebody needs to make some news quickly or I might run out of things to complain about (which is tantamount to the fabric of the universe coming undone). In the interests of all existence, I beg someone to do something newsworthy.
Where is our friggin’ war with Iraq? Aren’t we supposed to be opening up a long overdue can of retributive whoop ass on the supreme villain Saddam by now? Right now, all I hear is political jargon that I can pretend to understand but don’t really care about. Sure, it’s heating up on Capital Hill. Senator Tom Daschle is laying the smack down on President Bush, but is that really exciting? Honestly, if I wanted to watch middle-aged men yell at each other over American politics, I’d visit home more often. Americans don’t want to watch the democratic process in action. We want blood, damn it. We want bombs. We want to kick some Iraqi ass and play “I’m Proud to Be an American” until our ear drums break.
Dubya has been touting his strike on Iraq for months now, and I, for one, am almost sick of it. Start the war or shut up. I hate the killing of innocent people as much as the next guy (assuming, of course, that the next guy is not a genocidal madman), but we need some news. Let’s go, Dubya, your daddy’s reputation is on the line. To say it with all of the eloquence and style of a high school boy: put out or get out. Give us something to talk about around the water cooler or go back to Texas.
Governor Patton, you’re killing me! So you tease us with a politically related sex scandal, and then admit to it right away? You don’t even have the decency to deny it and attempt to cover it up? Come on, you can do better than that. Tina Conners’ accusations could have been the focal point in the local news media for months, but since Patton wouldn’t play ball we still have nothing. It makes me wonder if Patton even watched the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Didn’t he know what he was supposed to do? Bill Clinton gave us a shining example of how to provide his fellow Americans with a juicy story of political and moral corruption. It’s a shame our own governor couldn’t do the same. Patton missed an opportunity to deceive both his accusers and supporters, and now we are all paying the consequences.
This country desperately needs some news. I am supremely confident in the abilities of our political leaders and fellow citizens to mess up each others’ lives. There are wars to start and idiotic thing to say and do. If we band together as a nation and as a people, we can do enough damage to fill the programming schedules of one thousand 24-hour news stations. I believe in you.
