I have a shirt I wear to the gym sometimes that reads TURN OFF THE NEWS.
I laugh at my reflection every time I put it on. I just launched a news website. Why would I want people to turn off the news? But I do.
I am more than serious.
I want YOU to turn off the manufactured news. The news you literally can’t do anything about. You know, the manufactured outrage. The manufactured pitting of Americans against each other. The talking heads who will say whatever, whenever as long as they get to keep talking on the TV.
I recently sent an email to an old DC friend to offer condolences on the passing of their friend, a one Robert Mueller. They are a REAL DC INSIDER. After I sent the email I remembered something they told me a decade ago. I’m going to share it with you.
The talking heads on TV don’t actually have hard and fast opinions on the things they’ve been asked to speak about.
I’ll make up an example, an older one. Peggy Noonan, a Reagan speech writer, who regularly made the rounds on the Sunday morning political talk shows. Let’s say she’s supposed to go on TV on Sunday and talk about a topic. Before she does that, she calls her favorite lobbyist up, then she calls her old staffer buddy, then she calls her lawyer friend, and to each she says what should I say on Sunday? Do these people still have relevance or any of the data or all of the answers? It doesn’t matter. She takes their opinions and talking points and she swirls them up and attempts to say something interesting, maybe with a historical quip, maybe with a fun factoid.
None of it is real.
Here’s the other thing you need to know about the District of Columbia. Residents there frequently take the number one spot in the United States for wine consumption. The district regularly outpaces the rest of the states, consuming more than double the national average per capita.
That’s a lot of wine.
So not only are these talking heads sitting around on the phone on Saturday manufacturing what to say to the American public on Sunday, they are also hammered while doing so. You seen Lindsey Graham on TV recently? The man is not sober.
Turn off the manufactured news. And while you are at it, turn off all those Facebook groups you follow that do the same thing. We’ve got enough problems to face in our world, in our state, in our county. Let’s focus on what we can do locally and let the loudmouth, always posting, always criticizing, always pontificating partisans scream into the void. Trust me, your life is going to get better.
It’s all made up anyway.
Sources:
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/washington-d-c-is-home-to-the-most-wine-drinkers-in-america
https://vinepair.com/articles/map-states-drink-wine-america-2024/
https://newrepublic.com/post/205289/republican-senator-lindsey-graham-alcohol-vomit-fish-tank
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2164053/lindsey-graham-washington-needs-to-drink-more/