July 2010 News Time Capsule

This is from the EconomistI decided to celebrate the birth of my second daughter with a rehashing of news stories from the last time I really kept a continuous link with civilization via the mass media: here is July 2010 as a time capsule of our civilization's most idiotic component.

In the Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses the famous fire hydrant experiment in which subjects were shown increasingly less blurry pictures of a fire hydrant until they were capable of identifying the object.  The experiment concluded that subjects were more likely to correctly identify the object sooner if they were shown fewer pictures.  Taleb interprets these counterintuitive results as proof that if we have discontinuous, intermittent exposure to something, we are more likely to understand that something.  He particularly discusses how intermittent exposure to news stories makes one more likely to know what's truly going on in the world than those who voraciously follow the news.

As an American living in Japan and returning to the U.S. twice a year on average, I sympathize with Taleb's premise (another post), but I think this particular overgeneralization is one of very few glaring faults in his book.  Either way, I'd like to present a news roundup of sorts.  I receive "the Slatest" everyday from Slate Magazine, which basically offers snapshots of news stories, and so I'd like to present some selected Slatest stories, and offer my visceral two cents.  Here it is:

1.  "China Now World's Second-Largest Economy" - Wow, I never saw that coming. 

2.  "Forecasters Expect World Population to Reach 7 Billion Next Year" - Wow, I never saw that coming.

3.  "Ethics Panel Unveils 13 Charges Against Rangel" - It's because he's black, right?

4.  "Thousands of Bangladeshi Garment Workers Riot Over Unfair Pay" - Kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia!

5.  "California Police Seize Nearly $2 Billion in Marijuana From Over 100 Sites" - What the fuck!?  Don't they have a huge budget problem or something?

6.  "Fired USDA Employee Will Sue Breitbart" - This story has probably played out by now, although I haven't been paying attention at all.  Did she win?  Oh please tell me Breitbart's empire is crumbling as we speak.

7.  "Ellen Degeneres Quits American Idol" - That show is played out like a Jherri Curl.  I'm ready to die. 

8.  "Mexican Drug Lord, Most Wanted Man Killed During Government Raid" - Legalize it.

9.  "Palin Criticizes Obama for Appearance on 'The View'" - Shut the fuck up, Palin.  We only keep you around as a reminder of what not to be like. 

10. "Fresh Evidence Ties Manning to Afghan Leak" - In the words of Don Draper to Roger Sterling on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, "We have no idea what's really going on.  You know that."

11.  "Dozens Arrested While Protesting Immigration Law" - When did protesting become a crime?  Our immigration laws suck.  Why do you think there are so many illegals?

What this Slatest snapshot leaves out is, of course, that July 2010 was the deadliest month in the history of the Afghan War.  Apparently that story just isn't sexy enough (or was too difficult to put into even-Kindergarteners-can-understand narrative form) to warrant headlines.  Nevertheless, as the connotative legacies of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon attest to, the antiwar left is silent so long as a Democrat is in the White House.  Seriously.  Despite the fact that he ended the Vietnam War, Nixon is reviled and hated by the antiwar left, while Johnson is held up as a role model for socially progressive Presidents.  The Right, for its own part, is perhaps reluctant to market its antiwar history for fear of pissing off the big business/gun lobby?