Well, I finally got an earful tonight on the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Although I consider myself to be someone who generally keeps up with current events, I also manage to avoid lots of the high publicity cases because I personally fail to see the value of rehashing the few facts that the public is usually privy to, with loads of speculation by very opinionated, opposite-minded experts. For example, I pretty much missed all of the details of the O.J. Simpson case, as well as the Laci Peterson double-homicide (well, I guess not ALL the details). I was more conscious of the Enron & Tyco cases, and unfortunately am fairly well-schooled in the Martha Stewart trial. But Jon-Benet? Nope. Come to think of it, I should probably shut up before some state assigns me to incredibly long jury duty.
Back to Abu Ghraib...I had a work crisis and spent a number of hours in my office cave, listening to the nightly programming of WAMU, where every show focused on that very subject, with no new facts to offer and plenty of people yelling about this or defending that. The only actual voice of authority, Sen. John McCain, simply offered that everything must be probed, questioned and looked into. Kind've sad after he was introduced as someone who never backed down from voicing his strongly-held convictions.
I think there are plenty of issues that need to be broken down and dealt with in as straightforward a manner as possible - but instead there are layers and layers of media to pick through to even decipher what has actually occurred. No wonder people zone out - just to keep from going crazy. Back to news on the web for me...
Posted by zippy at May 14, 2004 1:40 AM