THOUGHTS? Eva Mendes recently had heartthrob Ryan Gosling’s baby. When asked if she wears comfortable pants around the house, the actress told Extra:
“You can’t do sweatpants. … No, ladies, number one cause of divorce in America, sweatpants, no!”
This constant stream of "new style" updates coupled with the inane comments that I would read for some reason (never read the comments if you want to maintain any faith in humanity) led my my unfollowing the page and just having to get my news the old fashioned way.
I know that I'm probably an old fashioned fuddy duddy. But whats the point of being a bit of a curmudgeon if you can't have a good rant now and then about the news? I want my news to be written like someone with a journalism degree. I want to see a difference between Buzzfeed (good Lord!) and my local news station. I want to see some level of decorum and seriousness to the tone of how the news is presented.
Many would argue and get into the fact that the news is rigged, only reports things of a certain political slant, etc. Of course it is. I'm mainly talking about a cultural aesthetic. There are some things that we, as a culture, hold in a high esteem. Whether this is good or bad is not what I'm saying. But it can't always be Casual Friday in our culture. There are some things which command or demand a bit of starch in our shirts, softer voices; more thoughtful words. Funerals are one of those things. Even heathens know that there's something about funerals which makes us act differently than we do when we play XBox.
When I lived in the UK for 6 months, I picked up on the fact that most of their newspapers looked like our American tabloids. They had sort of a sleazy feel to them, and that was even the most respected ones. I may not like the politics of the New York Times, but that paper is respected and respectable. It feels classy, almost scholarly, and like I'm really holding a newspaper in my hand when I pick it up. I can almost guarantee you that their papers started out just as respectable as ours did. It's a gradual cultural slide into the toilet bowl if no one stops it.
My local news channel still maintains the on-air seriousness that you would expect from a local news station. But it's the Facebook page that suffers. It is probably run by some intern barely out of diapers, almost finished with some dorky degree he's getting. He writes headlines for the Facebook page while checking his Instagram and KiK with the other hand, between slurps of Starbucks. He's just a product of his culture. So am I. So are you.
But let's try to be mindful. We make the culture by how we act, react, and the attitudes we teach our kids. Let's figure out a way to "set some levels" in how we regard life. It's not all the same.
