The Greats

I’m an NPR junkie, a Google news reader. BBC, NY Times and Reuters all take top billing on my sites visited. i have deep-seated need to be in touch, to know what’s going on in the world. To be an active citizen of this wacky global metropolis.

Or I did. Lately though it’s been too much. I turn off Carl Castle in favor of my ipod, because the news is just too fucking depressing.

Put it another way – thanks to the beauty of Netflix I can watch documentaries pretty much when ever I want. It’s basically a PBS orgy on my TV all the time. Last night it was American Experience – MacArthur. This guy was a hawkish, self-righteous, conservative, egotistical mad-man. A general with a part-time gig as a one-man PR firm for which he was the sole client. Not the type of guy I’d go do a bike ride with on a free Saturday, given a choice. But for all his faults he was one of those great men of that era. Maybe they didn’t always do exactly the right thing but they saw with conviction and purpose the way forward. Leaders, i think is what they call them.

In contrast today, Scooter Libby got his sentence commuted.

The country our grandfathers thought they were fighting for is slowly and quietly dying, while we watch Paris Hilton get carted off to jail (hell, Bush should’ve just done a two-fer and let her off the hook as well – judicial precedent stacks up about the same). Where are the leaders ? Where are those magnificent bastards who we could love and hate with a passion. Or have we raised a generation so neutered and scared of offending the person next to them that we’ll just be washed into the sea by great waves of mediocrity as extremists of all varietals tell us to put our heads in the sand and be afraid?

We’re busy watching TV while the city burns.