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Then I had to get out of bed to face reality – one of the many things we all have to do every day, even though we don’t want to, because if we don’t we won’t have any money to buy the little luxuries we need that allow us to forget the fact that we spend most of the day doing things we’d rather not. Sounds absurd? Well, it is.
Reality isn’t fun – that’s why the word “harsh” often comes before it, and “bites” immediately afterwards. The nature of truth is why we lie to our kids about the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Jesus. We tell them that they live in a just world where adults are righteous, good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds punished. We do this in the hopes that they’ll grow up to be decent people.
They don’t, of course. You only need to turn to one of DSTV’s 68 BILLION JILLION news channels to see that most people grow up to be spiteful, drooling fools who are no more than two short steps away from eating their own young. Five minutes of headlines is all you need to dissipate any last remaining hopeful delusions you may regarding the humanity of humans.
We don’t need eight news channels – just quick newsflashes telling us that nothing much has changed. The world just isn’t interesting enough to warrant 24 hour news coverage. Politicians trot out the same tired rhetoric over again (except Jacob Zuma, who’ll be getting my vote purely for entertainment’s sake), and as for A-list celebrities, it’s a simple case of same drug addiction, different boob job. There’s no real news, because nothing is actually new. We get the same old stories, the same old soundbites and the same old movies. Notice how, in a stunning celebration of contradiction, nostalgia is the latest big thing? Well, that was also happening 10 years ago. In the ‘90s people were all nostalgic about the ‘80s, and now we’re nostalgic about 90s nostalgia. We’ve moved from mindless regurgitation to the cultural equivalent of dry retching.
But news channels like to pretend that everything they tell us is new, relevant and bizarrely, that these are facts we somehow need to know. No, we don’t! Most of the so-called news is really nothing more than entertainment. Reports of floods that kill thousands are followed by eye witness accounts of A-lister vagina sightings. New movie, new outbreak of Ebola – it’s all the same thing, really: simple, sensationalist entertainment that makes us feel fuzzy about the fact that we’re on the safe side of the TV screen. And that’s in a good news week. Most of the time it’s so boring you can be forgiven for being nostalgic about the last real disaster. Like, remember the Twin Towers? That was awesome! And depressing, of course. But mostly awesome. That’s why there were so many reruns.
Unfortunately, moments like these are few and far between, and you can consider yourself lucky if you happen to catch it live. For example, I’m still telling people how I watched the towers fall. They say they saw it on the news the next day, but I know they’re disappointed that they didn’t catch it live, like I did.
Trust me, it was much better live. I guess you just had to be there.
- Chris McEvoy
Want to comment? We bet you do
Talk to Chris and get the background to this column - and more - his Channel24.co.za Blog.
Click here to go to Chris's blog
Reality isn’t fun – that’s why the word “harsh” often comes before it, and “bites” immediately afterwards. The nature of truth is why we lie to our kids about the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Jesus. We tell them that they live in a just world where adults are righteous, good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds punished. We do this in the hopes that they’ll grow up to be decent people.
They don’t, of course. You only need to turn to one of DSTV’s 68 BILLION JILLION news channels to see that most people grow up to be spiteful, drooling fools who are no more than two short steps away from eating their own young. Five minutes of headlines is all you need to dissipate any last remaining hopeful delusions you may regarding the humanity of humans.
We don’t need eight news channels – just quick newsflashes telling us that nothing much has changed. The world just isn’t interesting enough to warrant 24 hour news coverage. Politicians trot out the same tired rhetoric over again (except Jacob Zuma, who’ll be getting my vote purely for entertainment’s sake), and as for A-list celebrities, it’s a simple case of same drug addiction, different boob job. There’s no real news, because nothing is actually new. We get the same old stories, the same old soundbites and the same old movies. Notice how, in a stunning celebration of contradiction, nostalgia is the latest big thing? Well, that was also happening 10 years ago. In the ‘90s people were all nostalgic about the ‘80s, and now we’re nostalgic about 90s nostalgia. We’ve moved from mindless regurgitation to the cultural equivalent of dry retching.
But news channels like to pretend that everything they tell us is new, relevant and bizarrely, that these are facts we somehow need to know. No, we don’t! Most of the so-called news is really nothing more than entertainment. Reports of floods that kill thousands are followed by eye witness accounts of A-lister vagina sightings. New movie, new outbreak of Ebola – it’s all the same thing, really: simple, sensationalist entertainment that makes us feel fuzzy about the fact that we’re on the safe side of the TV screen. And that’s in a good news week. Most of the time it’s so boring you can be forgiven for being nostalgic about the last real disaster. Like, remember the Twin Towers? That was awesome! And depressing, of course. But mostly awesome. That’s why there were so many reruns.
Unfortunately, moments like these are few and far between, and you can consider yourself lucky if you happen to catch it live. For example, I’m still telling people how I watched the towers fall. They say they saw it on the news the next day, but I know they’re disappointed that they didn’t catch it live, like I did.
Trust me, it was much better live. I guess you just had to be there.
- Chris McEvoy
Want to comment? We bet you do
Talk to Chris and get the background to this column - and more - his Channel24.co.za Blog.
Click here to go to Chris's blog
