News overload? Probably time to give it a rest
One thing I’m learning about myself since starting this blog — it’s really easy to get burned out about all the idiocy going on in today’s world. You can take it to seriously, develop strange physical ticks and muscle twitches, stress out, and grow large dark circles under your eyes.
Or you can occasionally say, heck with it all, turn off the cable news channels and actually QUIT reading the papers (online or offline papers) for awhile.
I’ve chosen in recent weeks to do the latter. It began when I finally couldn’t endure the idiocy of all the anti-everything crowds who rail against everything at the so-called “tea parties.” It grew into a compelling need for me when I listened to politician after politician spout silliness about health care reform. When something like 60 percent of all Americans surveyed want SOME sort of “public option” heath care and the politicians shout “SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!” about the idea — well, then you just know some insurance companies and HMO/PPO people have politicians paid and stuffed nicely in their rear pockets.
So the final straw came for me a couple of days ago at one of the “tea parties” where most of the House Republicans showed up to rail against health care once more, and the somewhat odd “mis-speech” by Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio). While waving a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his hand and proclaiming the importance of it, and calling the House health care bill the worst violation of U.S. freedoms he’d ever seen — he proceeded to quote the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
Except what Boehner REALLY quoted was the opening of the Declaration of Independence.
None of his colleagues standing behind him noticed the error, or if they did they never gave him a heads-up or wink or nod to inform him of the gaff. Perhaps they either 1) didn’t know the difference, 2) didn’t care about the mistake, 3) were too cowardly or “weasily” to make the correction, 4) were so patronizing about the dedicated patriots at the rally to think they would know the difference, or, 5) all of the above. LOL!
Whatever. At that point, I decided it’s time to take a break from my news overload. Have you thought about doing so, too?