This old town's changed so much, Don't feel like I belong...

I was there. I saw the day it happened. When the news shifted from facts of the day to it's present state of tabloid sensationalizing. To the point of lazy journo ethics....yes I was there that day. Now I won't reveal myself as Lucifer as The Rolling Stones did. No no Old Blue was then Young Blue. I had just walked my dog around the block and when I had got back in the news had broken, Elvis Presley was dead. He was my favorite uncles' favorite singer. Now Uncle Jerry had passed 3 years before but before he did, he had turned Young Blue onto Elvis. To me this was actually a double blow almost like I had another death in the family. Now, every night we watched Channel 7 Action News then we switched to channel 2 to watch Walter Cronkite. There was something President Carter did, and something that the house and senate were showing the opposite of progress IS Congress....Then Mr. Cronkite mentioned Elvis. It was his third story. It was appropriate for the times. you got the hard news the news that mattered THEN did you get the celebrity obit. Well the outrage that Walter received for daring to not make Elvis his top story was unprecedented. Granted Elvis was Rock n roll to a generation but he was merely a celebrity we have real hard news to get too....

I relate that tale to get to this one. Someone went to a Norwegian government building and bombed it, then he turned around and went to a childrens camp and shot up kids. over 80 kids were killed...and for a day we never knew the name of Anders Behring Breivik. We heard he's a right wing pig, we hear he's getting his information from the unabomber, he fell in love with the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck...but we didn't know his name or why for fucks sake would he blast away at kids. BUT we sure as hell knew what we were doing the second we heard Amy Winehouse was found dead. As a recovering soul myself I DO feel for her, I have wrote about my struggles and some I have noticed about some people but while her passing is sad Mostly for her family and perhaps some ardent fans, the weekend really should have been more about finding out about the sick fucker Anders Breivik.

I put the lazy journo ethics on...US. we no longer demand news. We have had a generation of overgrown kids that say "ohhhh the news depresses me I can't watch it" or they can't tell you one bill that Reid sponsors but because they watch Fox news keeping it "exciting" they know that it's "wrong for America".  My own pal was telling me that "you gotta admit Fox keeps news exciting"...and it is that attitude that tells you why journalists no longer exist in the US. All you have is commentators and idealogues. There are no more Journalists that dig for the truth, that do give a shit about our country. Whether they are on the right OR left, they go for the easy story instead of digging beneath the surface. In my English Comp classes they demand I go deeper than the surface, we do not hold our own journalists or politicians to that same ideal.

There is no liberal bias in the media Jon Stewart was right. There IS a sensationalistic bias,,,and i witnessed the day it happened and when young Blue heard that Cronkite caught hell, I went into my bedroom and played my old "You Can Hear It Now" albums my mother had from Edward R. Murrow to remind me who and what in life was important