Your Next Bold Move and Engaging with the News

“you want to track each trickle
back to its source
and then scream up the faucet
’til your face is hoarse
cuz you’re surrounded by a world’s worth
of things you just can’t excuse”  A. Difranco

I start off most days by reading the news.  Yes, I’m a news junkie.

In an attempt to reign in my digital ADD habits of jumping from one news site to the next and then following a thread of research or dialogue that leaves me in the depths of NOAA or WhiteHouse.gov, searching desperately for a way out of the cyber-blackhole I’ve crawled into, I started using Netvibe. I set up the uber-news aggregator site with my top 10 news site feeds all fed into one delicious tab.  At first, my reasoning had a sprinkling of logic- I can come to this one page, scan the headlines, read one or two relevant articles and move onto my work for the day.

This experiment has been going on for two days and well, I think it is actually like heroin for a news junkie. Wow!  I laid out my page so that on the left side of the screen I get my major news outlets- the NY Times, Washington Post, Al-Jazeera English, The Economist, The Guardian and the BBC.  On the right hand side are my alternative news sites, The Nation, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Slate and Dawn (a Pakistani New site).  Then, I laid out different tabs based on topics, so at any time in the day I can go to a page with RSS feeds from news outlets and magazines based on either, Foreign Affairs, The Oil Spill, Economics, or Business.

Yes, its insane, I get that, but I’m leading up to a couple points here. In the past two days, I’ve been drawn to some excellent articles from the Nation and Mother Jones (both of which fully fund investigative journalism- hard to find that in the mainstream media these days) ranging from the wars, the oil spill, the economy and the administration. I find it refreshing that they counter the mainstream media’s headlines with more investigative articles to counter the glossed over version presented to most of the country.

For example, The NYT ran with a lead story at the beginning of the week regarding the “$1 Trillion” in mineral deposits in Afghanistan- conveniently run after last weeks press coverage of the war surpassing Vietnam in length.  The Nation ran an article about how Washington is “drunk on war” and provided a direct counter to the NYT placating to keep the country at war. (They’ve caught quite a bit of grief about the NYT article, its timing, its sources and it serving as propaganda for a long and possibly un-winnable war).

So, this morning, after reading my NYT Op-Eds (a girls got needs) about the pansy-esque presidential address regarding the spewing reminder of our oil consumption society in the Gulf, I scanned the right side of my news screen and saw a headline that had to be read, “Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable?” Couldn’t resist, had to go there.

Wow.

Sometimes I wish I just didn’t feel compelled to engage with current events. Granted, I studied journalism at one of the best schools in the country, so I guess its ingrained.  But, the reason I returned to school to study journalism is because I became a news-junkie many years ago, but had no framework to understand the headlines and the world at large. I would get so angry at the headlines, but had no true understanding of the larger picture, of how the players, the politicians and the State fit into these headlines.

Who owns this media? Whose agenda am I engaging with and why?  Why does this same talking point spin through the news cycle and end up in the mouths of the people I’m serving at the bar where I work? These are all questions that I needed to answer.  I returned to school for professional, practical and selfish reasons, but I also returned so I could understand the news and put my opinion into the mix of things.  So I could understand my world and the f***** up shit that happens in “my name”, for the “sake of my country” and “my patriotism” and yada-yada.

And I find that I rarely get to engage in the discussion of the happenings in the world because so many people choose not to be informed.  I understand the reasoning behind it, “not enough time, its too depressing, its too overwhelming, the “what can I do about it, so I’ll just pretend it doesn’t exist” train of thought. I get that, and I try to respect it.

But, I don’t believe we can ignore the events around us any longer.  We have to engage in current events and we have to create our own framework to understand and process this news and the spins media outlets place on the news and for what reasons. That takes time and effort- but its an imperative in a world run by corporate interests- in a world we need to return to the people, not sacrifice for the corporation.  If we don’t engage and create our frameworks- things like the Tea Party and Sarah Palin happen- or worse- in the vacuum of disengagement, economic breakdown and proper leadership, things like Stalin, Hitler and Milosevic happen.

And its mornings like this, when I read an article sourcing a scientists blog from the oil industry about how its likely that the spewing oil in the Gulf might not stop, it is very close to getting much worse and yet the president said it will be stopped by July, that i think- I need to do more.

Reading and stoking a dialogue are something.  Taking action is another.

While shaking my head in disbelief and wondering why I engage in this act of masochism every morning, an old favorite song came on the Pandora and I was immediately taken back to 2004, where I sat reading the headlines of our war in Iraq and shook my head at the direction of our country and listened to this song at the end of every evening to soothe the swelling anger and disbelief. “Your Next Bold Move,” by Ani Difranco.  I’ve posted the lyrics below, read them.  There’s a live version from YouTube posted below.  Listen to it.  Sit with it for a bit.  Then go buy the album.  I did.

There was a time when I listened to this song, and album, regularly.  A time when I discovered the truth that had been hidden from me for many years, through history books written by the victors, media stories edited by their corporate ownership and dialogue guarded by the fear of the consequences of dissent. I find it fascinating that the song resurfaced this morning after years of hiding in my CD collection, while reading about the unstoppable oil gusher, and I’m wondering the meaning behind it.

And I’m wondering what my next “Bold Move” will be.

your next bold move
by ani difranco

coming of age during the plague
of reagan and bush
watching capitalism gun down democracy
it had this funny effect on me
i guess

i am cancer
i am HIV
and i’m down at the blue jesus
blue cross hospital
just lookin’ up from my pillow
feeling blessed

and the mighty multinationals
have monopolized the oxygen
so it’s as easy as breathing
for us all to participate

yes they’re buying and selling
off shares of air
and you know it’s all around you
but it’s hard to point and say “there”
so you just sit on your hands
and quietly contemplate

your next bold move
the next thing you’re gonna need to prove
to yourself

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable
and sell them to seagulls flying in circles
around one big right wing

yes, the left wing was broken long ago
by the slingshot of cointelpro
and now it’s so hard to have faith in
anything

especially your next bold move
or the next thing you’re gonna need to prove
to yourself

you want to track each trickle
back to its source
and then scream up the faucet
’til your face is hoarse
cuz you’re surrounded by a world’s worth
of things you just can’t excuse

but you’ve got the hard cough of a chain smoker
and you’re at the arctic circle playing strip poker
and it’s getting colder and colder
everytime you lose

so go ahead
make your next bold move
tell us
what’s the next thing you’re gonna need to prove
to yourself