Christoffel van Sichem II:
David receives the news of the death of Absalom
Alternate Title:
A ruler on a throne rends his clothes upon receipt of a message (1646)

"I can't be bothered now!"

I was once a perfect news consumer. At ten, when I started delivering newspapers, I read each edition from cover to cover, skipping over the parts that didn't interest me. I was there when NPR first launched and quickly became an ardent listener. For decades, my alarm clock woke me with BBC or Morning Edition. I rarely missed a broadcast and felt deficient whenever I did. I thought I could not live without those twice daily doses, morning and evening. I subscribed to the local paper, too, and read it through. I considered these habits to be necessities of citizenship and to be ill-informed, a high crime, or at least a significant misdemeanor. When our newly-instilled Chief Executive was sworn in the first time, I found myself suddenly unable to listen to the travesties reported twice daily as news. It seemed like unnecessary information, as meaningful as something produced by the Worldwide Wrestling Federation because it probably was. Further, my old, reliable NPR reporters were retiring on me, replaced by what sounded like interns who insisted upon ending every declarative statement with another question mark. I felt as though the more I heard, the dumber I became. I painfully weaned myself off of my NPR habit.

I retained my New York Times and Washington Post, though I made no attempts to scour those from end to end as I had with my small city publication. I retained a sense that I knew what was happening. I assiduously avoided exposure to the Faux Snooze Corporation or its outlets. When I learned what Rupert Murdock had founded, I reprogrammed my remote control so it couldn't call up anything Faux. I likewise easily avoided Rush Limbaugh and all of his echoers. I knew my shit from my Shinola®. I had been trained by Cronkite, Murrow, and their like and could not be easily fooled. After the golden age of nightly television news, I stopped getting my news from television, with the occasional exception of the Friday PBS News Hour, which retained a stellar reputation and produced a reliable weekly news round-up. The news became a side salad rather than my entire diet. The Trumped-up Fake News controversies of the teens missed me. Most of the resultant conspiracy theories also missed me, though I understand they were like Mother's Milk for some of the masses.

With that new/old incumbent's latest inauguration, I feel I can hardly afford to follow what passes for news. I can reliably presume some fresh outrage will headline every edition. The man produced ample infractions on his first day to fuel a couple of fresh impeachment investigations. I know for sure where his administration is going, though I do not have the stomach to watch the sausage deconstruction. It's become that being well-informed hardly seems worth the considerable effort—so much of what appears to try to pass as news feels like so much commentary. I continually wonder who elected that commentator qualified to comment. Most of what's passed as news rehashes what was already earlier turned into hash. Re-hashing hash while waiting for some formal statement that will be summarily hashed and then re-hashed seems to have become the primary occupation for those who call themselves "newsmen." There was a time when things were different.

The ability to mass market news initially seemed like a boon. It worked well for a while. Every town now has some unedited bulletin board inviting citizens to post their perspectives. These are uniformly unreadable, reproving the old necessity of gatekeepers, curators, and copyeditors. Those boards quickly became deplorable chroniclers of bigotry, prejudice, and old-fashioned bad manners. The dream that an unedited, freely flowing dialogue might liberate us was never more than a pipe dream. It has never once worked in practice. I get some of my news from rumors. I perform my due diligence and confirm through reliable sources, but I sometimes get out-fauxed and inadvertently spread some mis- or dis-information. A significant part of every news cycle now seems to be the suffocating presence of deliberate misrepresentation by people who care only about creating confusion.

When my son was small, he watched a television program that included a puppet newscaster called Gary Gnu. He'd proclaim, "No news is good news!" He'd present short clips of stuff he insisted was not news. His paradoxical newscast seems prescient now, for I ache for precisely that service. Days when no outrage arrives to upset my countenance seem like the best news days I ever experienced when tuning in to Morning Edition was still pleasing. I ache most for NoNews now; it seems like the best-case scenario. The news has been weaponized. The best-informed seem the most paranoid and, therefore, the least capable of opposing the encroaching evil. The news now seems as organized as any odd kickboxing competition because it's been engineered to resemble those most. For those with a short attention span, it still provides pure satisfaction. The storylines seem scattered because they are. When the story loses all coherence, it means they're winning.

I have adopted an attitude probably best represented by Bobby Child, the male lead in the Gershwin-infused Broadway musical Crazy For You. "Bad news, go away, Call 'round someday, In March or May. I can't be bothered now. My bonds and shares, May fall downstairs. Who cares? Who cares? I'm dancing, and I can't be bothered now." Ira Gershwin - I Can’t Be Bothered Now lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing, Raleigh Music Publishing, Raleigh Music Publishing LLC, TuneCore Inc., Warner Chappell Music, Inc. I'd rather be dancing and I can't be bothered now!

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz