negative news
Are you tired of reading the canned news you get from the Ithaca Urinal, the club news that passes for community news in the Ithaca Crimes, the official news from the New York Mimes? Sick of watching the talking heads on the tube reading what they consider the news from a teleprompter? Ever wonder why they don’t tell you what’s happening in Miramar or Brazil? Does Don Rather know where Miramar is? Do you feel more cosmopolitan catching the limey beat on BBC? Until they broadcast the soccer scores from Liverpool? Fed up with experts and sound bites, A little disgusted that all the news you seem to get comes to you from a corporation? Hey, it’s just another commodity, right? A product. Maybe you ought to consider that you get as much information from the back of a cereal box? Perhaps you get as much information from a supermarket tabloid?
Or is it the content? Maybe you’re sick and tired of hearing about Iraq? Tsunami victims? Hey, we sent them enough money already. Can’t they get off the front page? The good thing about getting news from MSNBC or those other chirpy web news services is that the really depressing stuff disappears within a couple of days and you get back to the serious stuff like rating the new model year of SUV’s. Yeah, and they advertise services where you can find killer babes in your neck of the woods.
A couple of people in Ithaca, New York must have been as depressed as you are about the style and content of the news. They got together and produced this zippy new rag called Positive News. It’s all about the good things that are happening in the world. Imagine that! No more sad, sick and cynical shit about war, famine, plague, death, natural disasters, man-made disasters, the corruption of power, the power of corruption, corporate misuse of the world’s resources, man’s inhumanity towards man, man’s inhumanity towards every other species on the planet. No more headlines about snipers, baby swipers, sick motherfuckers killing their girlfriends, sick motherfuckers killing their entire families, sick motherfuckers killing entire ethnic groupings. Not a word about Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, Martha Stewart, Kenneth Lay. You know, the typical stuff that brings you to the edge of your toilet bowl.
Nosirreebob. The Positive News only prints news stories that are wholesome, inspiring and edifying. Or at least, that’s what Ez thinks they print. Because he can’t really bring himself around to reading an entire issue of Positive News. Think about it for a second. Really get your mind around it. Are these people on drugs? Like, who decides in the first place what’s positive? What if there’s nothing positive that week, like 99.9% of the planet just contracted ebola from a can of devilled ham that was dropped out a plane by George Bush, Donald Rumsfield and Condi Rice and the only people that survived are millionaires? Would you consider it positive that a couple of people survived?
From what Ez can make out without having to really open Positive News and process the contents is that this is a newspapers about do-gooders. Do-gooders who win the Nobel Prixe for Peace. (Since Alfred Nobel, the guy who invented dynamite is the same dude who endowed the prize, this is like General Motors giving Ralph Nader some kind of award or other. ) Do-gooders who do good things for the planet. Do-gooders who do good things for poor little people from other countries who don’t have it so good. Do-gooders who don’t want to trash the fucking system that makes sure these poor little people don’t have it so good. They want to make the system care. They want to improve the system. They are not pissed off enough to throw a brick through someone’s window. They are not angry at all which only goes to prove that they must have it pretty good. They don’t have to work at Cornell Dining, scraping dishes. They don’t have to work in restaurants serving latte drinks to yuppie college students, live with 16 other people in a 3 room apartment, pay $650 to some jerk mechanic to get their water pump fixed only to have their brakes fail the following week. Which means they have plenty to eat, plenty of time to do good. They are professional do-gooders or else amateur do-gooders trying to break into the tight little club of professional do-gooders. These are not people who Ezra would ever invite over for dinner.
Then Ezra read the credits. He knew at a glance, the scales fell off, he had it all figured out. It was a sinister liberal plot after all. There was no mistake.
Marty Luster and Paul Glover were, according to the credits, associated with this attempt to burn the Outhouse. Just like the Nazis burned the Reichstag. It was as plain as day.
Marty Luster is the Ithaca city attorney. Former state assemblyman. Right hand man to Madame Peterson. The people that brought you Progressive Ithaca, that semi-mythical hamlet where the races mix harmoniously, where the only poor people are the poor in spirit, social work capital of the world. . The folks that paid off the editors of the Utne Reader to rate Ithaca one of the most enlightened cities in Amerika. Despite the fact that it was New Paltz, New York that issued wedding licenses to gay couples, not Ithaca. Despite the fact that the city of Ithaca issued an eviction notice against a minority businessman and got their tails sued off. Despite the fact that Ithaca’s African Americans are marginalized and that the black community center is barely able to keep its head above water. Yessireebob, here’s a guy who knows how to hang one of those deodorizer bulbs in his toilet bowl.
And Paul Glover, Ithaca’s Mr. Fantasy himself. The former anarchist who made a convenient switchover to the Green Party, tried to run for mayor, garnered the Ecstasy vote. Dear Mr. Fantasy, please bring the trolley back, give us Franco-American harmony, happy money, happy Tuesdays, dancing in the streets.
Ezra says, follow the money. Where the fuck did these dudes get the money to put out this slick, five color, 15 page digest of pleasantness? Do you know how much dinero it costs to put out a newspaper basically the size of the Ithaca Crimes? Do you think Wal-Mart could be footing the bill? After all, it was Wal-Mart that turned the smiley face into a universal symbol of American progress.
Maybe Ez will have to dig a little deeper. In the meantime, Ithacans, take heart. You can always get your negative news right here at Ithaca Sucks.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 4:44 PM
