Doing the Crawl

I can remember when the news was delivered by serious men like Walter Cronkite. Now it all runs along the bottom of the TV screen in the same size type--no headlines here--while airheads above it interview celebrities about their latest movies or chefs demonstrate how to make a cassoulet. (It's French for casserole; tastes the same, sounds fancier.) It's up to us to decide what matters.

Just this morning I learned: Iran is still making nuclear weapons. A Palestinian woman is dead after a bombing. Obama comes back from Latin America and is locked out of the oval office. Violet-eyed actress Elizabeth Taylor dies and Elton John is sad about it. The whoopie pie is now Maine's official state treat and the blueberry pie is the state dessert. Unemployment has dropped 11% in the past seven weeks. The medical marijuana business is booming, with sales reaching $1.7 billion. US invades Libya. Rich women get melanoma more than poor women. The water in Tokyo is now considered unsafe for infants following the nuclear reactor disaster in Japan.

As for Liz Taylor, I never saw the whole "violet eyes" thing. They looked regular to me.