I am conflicted - to watch the news and wonder how the world became so crazy or to ignore the news and be oblivious? Each choice has advantages; I've been a news junkie since I was in college and Watergate fascinated all of us. My friends and I spent hours watching news coverage of all those old, rich, white guys who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. We knew they had been up to no-good and there was a little bit (okay, a lot) of satisfaction knowing that they were on the hot seat. After all, these were the guys who had sent our friends and brothers to VietNam to get killed, injured, and traumatized. These were the guys that said we couldn't smoke dope or drink beer in the car. These were the guys that made us feel paranoid because they had made rules against everything we did. Now they were getting a little bit of their own medicine. Oh yeah, we felt some satisfaction.
These days, though, I don't get that same sense of satisfaction. No, what I feel instead is a deep sorrow. When Nixon's 'plumbers' got caught it was news. It was new! It bordered on amazing, fascinating, heroic. These crooks (yes, Nixon, you were a crook) had broken the political code and a couple of unknowns busted them. There was Deep Throat, whispering in the dark, guiding a couple of young journalists. There was the daily unfolding of scandalous behavior, denials, intrigue, finger-pointing, scape-goating. Oh it was edge-of-your seat stuff. Now, it's business as usual. A new guy (or gal) comes in all full of Hope and Change and Transparency but before long little bits of truth start to ooze out and before you know it, you know it. The same old 1970's corruption.
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