FAST FOOD FOR THE MIND

On NPR yesterday came a story about coverage of this year's Casey Anthony story - some murder trial in Arizona. LOST had never heard the name Jodi Arias until a couple of weeks ago - in a conversation with a once erudite relative who had slunk into to media muck like some Mammoth in the prehistoric mid-Wilshire area, going off gleefully about salacious snippets of another's messed up existence. But Arias - or her trial at least - was center stage on NPR yesterday - even you, public radio? A line from an interviewed executive at a cable channel burned a spot in LOST's fevered brain, ". . . the public is hungry for stories like this" as a justification for while they'll continue to be flash frozen, quick-fried, wrapped, styrofoam boxed and shoved out the aural drive-through window that is our radio, or TeeVee, ad nauseum, in Jeebus' Reagan and Exxon's name, amen, hallelujah. That's when the light bulb went on. The public is no more "hungry" for this than it is for its next Cheesy Cool-Ranch flavor Gordita with Mystery Meat, or bread-less chicken sandwich with extra bacon and cheese (no apologies to you Yum Brands), unless by "hungry" you meant "acclimated." Food - even fast food - used to taste better, cost less, and be sold in something more moderate than gargantuan sizes. While it still takes the willing words of the ordering class to opt for what passes as sustenance, over the course of a generation or two this nauseating collection of deep fried fakeness has ingratiated itself into the culture, sort of like termites into the average wood frame home of a certain age. What are the end results? Obesity, diabetes, lethargy, dullness, and those may be the best qualities. Isn't the same really true for news and information? What used to pass as news has been beaten down - bashed repeatedly with loud inaccurate claims of partisan bias, turned weakly over to the entertainment divisions of the networks - which themselves have been purchased and combined into media monstrosities pursuing profit above all else, and for at least as long a time ago as that slow meander down the 405 of a particular White Bronco - really even longer than that - what has passed for news has really been one giant orgy of Big Macs and Velveeta nachos for the mind. How stupid are we for accepting this as the norm?