Tuesday, December 2, 2008
I have been struggling to come up with ideas for this column for the past month and have been trying mightily to figure out why. I’m opinionated and well-informed enough to be able to at least go on a rant, but that hasn’t been the case. After taking my editor’s advice and scouring the news and trying to find something to write about, I finally found the answer.
I just don’t care about anything newsworthy anymore.
The election of Barack Obama gave me some hope that we finally came together and lifted this derailed train up and returned it to its place on the tracks. But now trains are barreling upon us from all directions, and all I feel is that we won’t save ourselves in time.
For starters, this country has gone topsy-turvy in one month. Tom Friedman says the economic problems are just the end of the beginning, and all young people should be saving. But Robert Samuelson says that saving, especially during the holiday season, hurts the economy.
Maybe they decided they would write each other’s column for a day without telling anyone.
Al Franken is almost a senator, and Skeletor, I mean, Ted Stevens, is gone. Oh yeah, and Congress is flogging automotive representatives on spending in excess. Is this Bizarro America?
But none of that matters to me because there are other important things happening that I don’t seem to care about. The American auto industry, the symbol of America’s middle class, is about to implode.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has already hit the campaign trail. There is actually a severe risk of monetary deflation. Unemployment is rising. Housing prices are decreasing. There have been pirate stories twice a week for the past month and none of them were cool. There’s talk of creating a woolly mammoth from DNA found in some ice.
Well, maybe there’s some hope with that last one.
I really have no idea why I have lost all emotion and sense of attachment to this country. I used to read the news and feel something, but now it’s just a shrug of the shoulders and a sip of the coffee. It took a four-month stay in Europe to cure me of these ills the last time I got them. I hope my three-week stay there this winter will do the same.
— — Graham is a Columbus, Ohio, graduate student in exercise physiology.
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Comments
Graham: Why I just don’t care about the news now
Here is some help: Try comparing the board of regents to the big three auto companies in their search for more money. How can KU stave off raising tuition? Maybe Kansas should consider revising its constitution so that it doesn't have to balance the budget. Give us some opined insight into what happens when we start to pull out of Iraq and hundreds of thousands of reservist soldiers come back to the U.S. expecting to work again. Obama has made several good choices for the help around him, look into some of that. Find some people who deserve to be pardoned by Mr. Bush. These are columns.
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