What's the Story?

It is not often that I resort to the dirty tactic of writing serious posts. Generally speaking I find it hard to write about sensible things. Yes I write for Bloggernews (hell they even pay me!), tho god knows why. Most of my posts are about the sadly unreported aspects of the news, mainly the idiot crimes that people commit.

I also am a writer for the ICAN folks, on there I tend to stick to technology stories, particularly how technology relates to the working poor and homeless. Even though the subject matter of 'The Digital Divide', may not sound like a humor based thing, it is actually a great subject, and also one that does often offer a lighter side.

What pisses me off tho is what is going on in the world of the real news networks, apparently there is absolutely no 'good news' to be found. All of the news services today were running the very very sad and disturbing story about a shooting in an Amish school as the top item. Some obviously very sick person entered a one classroom school armed with a couple of guns. He seems to have let the boys, and adults leave, and then tried to execute the girls aged 6 to 13.

The Amish in some ways are similar to the Hudderites that we have in Southern Alberta. They are a close knit group with strong family ties and a general dislike for technology. That does not make them bad people. Yes it makes them different, they don't have email addresses, they don't have ipods, hell they don't even watch CNN.

Why would anyone want to execute them?

Andy Wahol and his very well known quote about everyone having their 15 minutes of fame seems to becoming the norm, and the news networks eat it up. Yes it is important to keep the world informed about what is happening, but it is absurd to have what seemed like 8 hours of constant helicopter based video of an empty building housing corpses and what I am sure are some very bad memories. CNN even managed some helicopter based video of the house that the killer lived in. I am sure this is just what his wife and three children needed.

I really think the news organizations need to go back to school and enroll in some sensitivity training classes.