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June 19, 2005 Basically, I stopped reading newspapers around 1980. At the time I was living in Atlanta, Georgia and would read the Atlanta Constitution from time to time. One day, however, I found a very annoying article in the newspaper that I had already come to regard as synonymous with banality, and in an access of indignation, I flung the blasted rag in the trash, vowing never to read it again. Thereafter, I almost never read any newspapers but foreign ones that I read strictly for language practise. I read plenty of Novoye Russkoye Slovo, Beijing Wanbao and al-Sharq al-Awsat, but no New York Times, Atlanta Constitution, Houston Chronicle or whatever. In the foreign papers, I didn’t pay any mind to content. This was all about grammar and rhetoric. My only contact with the American press would be a cursory glance at the headlines through the vinyl window of a newspaper vending box on the street corner, or perhaps, if someone left a newspaper on a bus seat, I’d give it 30 seconds of my time. You might wonder how I kept up with the news, inasmuch as I don’t watch televison or listen to radio. The answer is easy. I didn’t keep up. I was completely out of touch with what the publishing industry deigns to consider the news of the day. There was their world and then there was the real world. Then one Sunday morning, years later, in 1993, I was walking down the street in Hollywood, Florida, a suburb of Miami, where I was then living, and I saw the inevitable newspaper box on a street corner somewhere. What struck my attention was that the Sunday edition of the Miami Herald was about 2 inches thick. I knew the New York Times was like that, but the Miami Herald? Puhleez! So I bought a copy and sat down in Young Circle Park to see what the hullabaloo and ballyhoo were all about. First of all, I removed all those flyers that make up about 25% of the bulk of this outsized tabloid, flyers like those of Sears, JCPenney, Publix and Winn-Dixie, tossing them in a wastebasket I had drawn near for the very purpose. Let me interject here that I had always considered want ads to be a valuable community service, although I myself had never landed a job or found an apartment by responding to an ad. I had tried many times, but had never had any luck. So, saying to myself that I was glad that they were probably good for other people, just not for me, I heaved them into the same wastebasket. Then I came to the sports page. I had always thought it would be nice if there were two or three national athletic spectaculars every year, instead of the thousands that are reported in papers like the Herald, so with an “Alas!” or an “Oh, well!”, I hurled the sports pages into the trash too. Then came the listings of TV shows, radio programs and movies, but I don’t watch TV or listen to radio, as I said, so their value to me was nugatory. Therefore, I heaved them into the garbage with the rest of the junk. Then there were the articles on travel and dining, but these were aimed at middle-class simpletons who have more money than brains and don’t care how much they weigh. Being on a perpetual diet, the last thing I want to know about is where all the great restaurants are. I deposited those pages in the receptacle for which, by their very nature, I felt they were meant. Then came the business pages, and I would have been truly interested to learn what goes on inside a bank, a brokerage, a large manufacturing company or airline, but the articles seem always to reduce to naming CEO’s and talking about earnings, rather than the real essence of the business. So Nathan Weinstein is now directing the ABC Publishing Co. So what? So I consigend the business pages to the selfsame depository as the rest of the printed matter I had reviewed. I automatically discarded the comics, the crossword puzzles, the columns on astrology, chess and bridge, the lovelorn letters, and society gossip. Does anyone actually read that stuff? Finally, I got down to the two pages of editorials, and I was pleased to see an article on Egypt, where I had just spent six months, but it was all about what a mean dictator Hosni Mubarak is. You can spend your life reading about Hosni Mubarak and still lack any understanding whatsoever of the real Egypt, of Egyptian people and the Egyptian way of life. So the last two pages went into the basket too. I didn't need for some journalist from Georgia with long sideburns, pink cheeks and cowboy boots who just loves country music giving me his views on world affairs. To sum it all up, I never looked at the Miami Herald again. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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