Tuesday, July 17, 2007

"Why do we care about this?"

I realize I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but it's been jangling about in my head. Time to set it free...

Our television consumption consists primarily of watching the news. CNN Headline News to be specific. Why? Well, it's one of the channels we get that's in English, and does not have Judge Smurfy or whatever the hell their names are on 24/7. It's good for about ten minutes, which is pretty much all of the entertainment news I can stomach. Oh, they'll occasionally hit on a story and not tell you the whole thing, but then they're off on three or four stories in succession about what some Hollywood person is having for breakfast.

Which brings me to this: Last week, the story they were incessantly looping was the one about David Beckham joining a professional soccer team in California. I think. I'm not about to look it up, and I don't care. See, it's soccer. Not "football". We're in America, and it's called soccer. By the same token... we're in America and it's soccer! Why is this on the news? I don't mean the sports segment, I mean the news segment! Building burned down, war going on, school bus full of nuns and blind orphans crashed, and soccer?!? Yeah yeah yeah... most popular sport in the rest of the world... blah blah blah. It's a bunch of guys in shorts and knee high socks who run back and forth. It's great for little kids, as they need to run around and get tired and sleep and shut the hell up. But I mean... really... professional soccer in America? The most interesting thing I've ever seen in a soccer match is when that Zidane guy rammed his forehead into that other guy. (Again, don't care who. Don't care where. Remember: Soccer = more boring than baseball.) Apparently, he wasn't supposed to do that. But I'll tell you, if they made that a play, and had a point system surrounding the move, we'd watch it.

For some reason, the media wants us to care. My better half saw something that sums it up nicely. She was watching newscasters discuss this Brit soccer whosis, and the newscasters started laughing and saying words to the effect of "Why do we care about this?" Exactly. I miss the days when I could get news by watching the news. Now it's just entertainment interspersed with the occasional shooting. I don't think I'm going to watch the news anymore. I'll just read the good stuff online.

3 comments:

Dzeni said...

I partially agree with you! Partially as I in I don't have a problem with soccer. It seems to make a lot of people quite happy. I do agree that the Beckhams moving to the States should not be serious news. Its entertainment. And not very good entertainment at that. Its almost as bad as the whole Paris in Prison saga (don't get me started on that one). I enjoyed reading your post :)

gwen said...

Let me help you: the reason you don't care about David Beckham is not because he plays soccer, it's because he's married to Posh Spice. Who is almost interesting in that she appears to be some sort of cyborg.

As for your soccer rant: pptthhhhbb. I love soccer. Only respectable sport on the planet, as far as I'm concerned.

Wontar said...

Dzeni - Paris in prison... ugh! There should be a camera-free island where we could ship these people.

Gwen - If it could be proven that she really is a cyborg, then that would be interesting. She probably has artificial... um... parts... but that doesn't make one a cyborg. That makes one vain. And though I played soccer as a youth (in gym class, not as part of a team), I'm really more of a full-contact chess kinda guy. Or the 100 yard spreadsheet.