The news is bad. Whether talking about the actual shit that comes screaming out of the teevee machine (h/t Charlie Pierce w/respectful nod to driftglass) and your favorite social media, or about enormous corporate delivery systems scrambling to figure out how to integrate dictatorship into their business models, the news sucks.
People are being kidnapped and disappeared. Prices are about to explode. Canada hates us. This is not, as they say, the country I grew up in.
Not that the country I grew up in was perfect, or even all that great for a hell of a lot of people. It's just that it used to feel like there was progress, and like figuring it out was possible.
I hate the people who've taken that feeling away.
If you're feeling, as I was, that now nothing is possible and everything is pointless and it was all for nothing, I get it. If you're tired of feeling that way and you want to feel some other way, there are ways to make that happen, although some of them involve becoming a dumber, meaner person. Some of them involve drinking a lot, among other things. One thing we did was change the way we consume "news."
The first thing we did was cancel our subscription to the Los Angeles Times. For those who don't know or don't remember, the owner of the L.A. Times spiked a Kamala Harris for president endorsement that had been proposed by the paper's editorial board, instead offering to run a both-sides "non-partisan" analysis of policy. The board declined, and several members resigned. Not saying it would have made a difference in the election; just saying it made a difference in what we read every morning.
Actually, the pulled endorsement was just the final straw in a series of disappointing moves by The Times, which also included giving "terminally smug Republican political propagandist and professional liar, Trump fluffer Scott Jennings"™ a prominent platform on the Opinion Pages of the paper. Oh, and getting rid of the box scores (I hear they may be back? Sort of?). Anyway, canceling that subscription was an easy call.
We've also migrated from Xitter to Bluesky. Even though it's a work in progress, I've almost entirely withdrawn from that other place, and I find it immensely more satisfying. Virtually everyone I read every day is here and I find the links helpful in keeping up with news I'm tracking. Find me at @jeffwaid.bsky.social.
We've cut way back on teevee news. We haven't been CNN fans for decades, and since they also pay Jennings to smirk and deflect (What about Biden!), that's unlikely to change. Haven't watched the Big Three in forever, and that includes the "Sunday Shows." The clips I see sometimes remind me of a middle school art class with a substitute teacher.
Other times, it's just a teevee robot talker with a list of approved questions facing off with the dissembler of the moment. No probing follow-ups. No holding firm until you get an answer. Moving on. And always both-sidesing the most obvious issues. "Critics are saying that kidnapping people off the street using unmarked agents in unmarked cars is a violation of due process protections, potentially illegal. Joining me today a spokesperson for the kidnap administration to offer a different perspective and explain why kidnapping is actually good." We're going to have to leave it there.
Actually, that's pretty much all of teevee news. It may be different on FOX; I wouldn't know. I used to check in once in a while just to see what the enemy was up to, but every time I did what I saw was misleading and aggravating, sometimes appalling, and always the same. No surprise; it's their nature.
I suppose it's only disappointing if you allowed yourself to have a different expectation, which I did with respect to MSNBC. My love affair with the network began with Keith Olbermann, whose Countdown with Keith Olbermann gave me some place to put my anger during the Bush, W years. When John Kerry lost in 2024, the first presidential contest since the lawless 2020 Supreme Court election and the even more lawless invasion of Iraq, to say Countdown saved my life is only a modest exaggeration. It inarguably saved my sanity.
Now MSNBC has become, with a few notable exceptions (fewer, with the departure of Joy Reid, and before that Tiffany Cross), just another corporate message machine dodging the tough stuff and staying out of the kitchen. They trot out the same old list of paid analysts to hem and haw and shake their heads and sometimes their fists. I'm sad, but now I have a lot more time for other stuff.
What now? As I say, in our house we've changed the way we consume news. We've cut back, not just on teevee news and the L.A. Times, but also on the amount of time spent doomscrolling. The anger and frustration that come with ingesting the images and stories of the daily horrors perpetrated by the present administration were not sustainable.
For me, I'm mostly on Bluesky in the morning with local teevee news in the background. Traffic and weather! I use it to get current and to point me toward the pieces I need to read first. It also helped me find the substack/newsletters from writers I feel share my concerns. I subscribe (for free) to several and they arrive in my inbox throughout the day. True, the content that is restricted to paid subscribers can be frustrating, but our plan is to spend some of our L.A. Times savings to support a handful and get the full experience. I return to Bluesky in the afternoon/evening for updates.
We do still take the New York Times, but keeping it is an object of conversation. Were it not for our being native New Yorkers (it's The Times!) and the crossword puzzle, that conversation might end differently. Finally, we have a digital subscription to the Philadelphia Inquirer because Will Bunch.
The news sucks, but for me it's better than it used to be. This is going to be a long and intense battle. It's going to be essential that we have trustworthy sources of information and the energy and passion to act on that information. We need to keep fighting and we need leaders who will fight for us and along with us. The other side will not quit. They will never give up. It's existential for them and their privilege and their view of the universe, and this is an extinction burst. Time is not on their side, and (warning: Xitter link) they know it.
In the meantime, remember: It's baseball season!
What's a rally really like?
"It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come." - Phil Alden Robinson, Field of Dreams
If you're looking to do something, please consider joining us!
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