I received an e-mail this morning from a friend who was planning to attend an international conference in Auckland and with just days to spare before he was scheduled to depart he’s received word that the conference has been canceled. My friend, who is a junior faculty member–nay, an adjunct professor, is “out” the cost of his plane tickets. Who knows if he will soon be out of a job?
News flash: the world economy has collapsed.
This still feels like news here in the United States for the coverage on CNN, MSNBC, and the 3 networks has focused on the “drama” of the stimulus package but in doing so has presented the story as a mere soap opera, as if they’re covering the Paris Hilton arrest: “Will she come out of her house and submit to her handcuffs in front of the hordes? Will she weep on cue for the cameras? Will her attorney drop the “F bomb” for our sport?”
Even as we watch the U.S. economy “bleed out” we’re treated to the inane ET branded speculations about whether any member of Paris Hilton’s family will greet the sheriff.
But at this point its clear that the pending stimulus package isn’t even a medium sized bandaid for the shuddering economy and its additionally clear that the only people in America who aren’t terrified of what’s happening are the news producers, that intra-ophthalmic class of celebrity chasers–the same people who unblinkingly brought us the Iraq war because, after all, the whole thing was an episode of COPS. The Marines would burst in with the embedded media at their heels and we’d find Saddam in his underwear with his Weapons of Mass Destruction piled up in the double wide.
IN narrative poetry there’s always a moment where the poet says “Ah but you want the truth dear reader” and the test of the poet is how artfully he or she can pull off that trick but the truth mostly hurts and trickery or no, the fact is that the GOP isn’t signing on to the stimulus because they don’t want to be in the same room with the corpse.
The Obama team hopes they can hit the economy with the paddles and get it to breathe.
The GOP is gutless and cowardly and un-American but that’s not really news. Hmmm. How about this? We’llcount on the press to imagine we’re all in Beverly Hills.
Planet of the Blind 
Your points are well taken. I picked up the NY Daily news and the headline is A-ROID, an obvious play on NY Yankee A-Rod positive drug test. The sports page had about 6 pages on the story. The front of the paper, the supposed news section, had another 4 pages. The collapsing economy received scant attention.
I feel bad for your academic friend. As a part timer I am discouraged by the two class system on university campuses. Half of all professors are academic day laborers–disposable workers who garner little to no respect.
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