End of an Era

I just cancelled my subscription to a daily newspaper after sixty-eight years of subscribing in Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Paul, Philadelphia and to the Boston Globe. No, I am not losing my eyesight, nor am I running out of money or moving to Paris, where like a proper Parisian, I will read Le Monde. It's simply that I am fed up with what the papers write about and the predictability. Actually it is not their fault. They are only the messengers for the newsmakers. The chief culprit is Congress. The Senate and House have lots of meetings, but little of genuine significance to the nation ever happens. The journals have to put out an edition every day. How can they do it if there is no news? By re-cycling the same story over and over and over with slight modifications to stress presumably, but often softball NEWS – REPUBLICANS BLAST OBAMA ON BUDGET, or DEMOCRATS FAULT GOP ON CLIMATE CHANGE.CHANGE. The story could be about Social Security or Medicare or drug lords and their cohorts and clamping down on crime (while the prison population soars, or a scandal involving celebrities, or getting divorced or having a baby, or a child killed by a parent who should have had his parental rights terminated or been sent to jail a long time ago ,or a back and forth in arguments about gun control, or -- enough, you get the point. What will I do? I'll think about other former necessities that are now not worth my time.

More Later, Joe