I probably need to stop watching the local news, though that's how I get my weather information (and also information on "is it safe to leave my house today" - I am mostly joking there, but I do live a matter of blocks from the county jail, which has had numerous escapees in past years, and also, there have been some cases of suspicious sorts being around my building on campus, and if there's ever a report of "police activity" near my building, I will not come up here until I'm either sure it's over, or am sure there are other people from my department around)
But yeah. A lot of local news stories are annoying to me. They do a lot of "man on the street" junk, where they find the most "backwoods" person they can and let them talk. Or they chase down a grieving relative and have them cry on camera.
Today, two annoying-to-me stories:
1. The sort of self-congratulatory "oh look aren't these cheerleaders Good People because they made football mums for the special-needs students at their school" and while I think being nice to (especially) special needs students is a good thing, it does seem rather, "They did it for the exposure" and also, as someone who was a weird nerdy kid but not special-needs, I found myself wondering if they were also kind to the weird nerdy kids, or if they just went on harassing and excluding them and it was ok that they did because those weird nerdy kids weren't special-needs.
Also, I feel minorly ragey knowing how the special-needs students were treated by MY fellow students when I was a student myself. Yes, we've learned a lot in 35 years, I guess, but....people were not very humane when I was in junior high. Not to me, not to the girl who-probably-had-Aspergers that I wound up sitting with at lunch, not to the other girl I sat with who had spina bifida. Shoot, not to the kids from lower-SES households, either.
I mean, yeah, I get the idea that the circle of compassion expands slowly at best, but....if these cheerleaders turn around and bully the girl with messy hair whose nose is stuck in a book all the time, they are not the saints the news story made them out to be.
2. "Next up - what people in our area feel about the NFL anthem protests!"
NO. Full-on Grumpy Cat NO on this one.
I don't care. I don't flippin' care what my silly neighbors think about this issue. No one cares what I think, why should I care what some random guy they stopped in the wal-mart parking lot thinks?
Okay, fine, the football players have the right to protest. The team owners also have the right to say, "You're not permitted to do that on the job" if they so choose (there are things I cannot do on my job). People have the right to support they players or turn off the game in disgust if they want to. Yes, the inequality with which the different races get treated by the police is a problem and an issue but this is not going to solve it. And if it's more of a knee-jerk reaction to some foolish thing the president tweeted out or said, all the more so with the "not solving any actual problems."
I've never been an NFL fan and all this makes me no more disposed to be. Honestly, more and more? I'm coming around to the idea of treating "pro sports" more like the minors - don't pay these guys multi-million dollar salaries for what they do. Pay them a reasonable income, make sure their health care is covered and all that* but don't pay them such a huge amount of money.
And yeah, yeah, I know: "talent like that is rare." So are good dentists who work well with dental phobes and are able to do their thing quickly and with minimal pain. So are geriatric nurses who are able to patiently deal with someone who is an angry Alzheimer's patient who doesn't understand what's going on. You'd have to pay me an awful lot more than I currently make to deal daily with even more difficult people than I already do.
(*And maybe, if the head-trauma issue is as big as it seems to be? Maybe football just needs to quietly go away. I know the fans would be disappointed but we don't need people who are unable to function once they hit their 50s because they took so many hits on the field)
Yeah, I'm crabby this morning but it does seem things are getting more stupid lately.
I'm still feeling "stuck" about various things in my life, which probably emphasizes my "everything is stupid" mood.
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