No wonder the polls are weird

I just spent a couple of days in Grants Pass Oregon at a conference. While I was there I had the opportunity to try and find some news worth watching. What I found was truly unsettling.

The news that I saw, even from the cable news channels, was different from what I am used to seeing in Portland. Maybe it was a freak event, but what I saw (over and over) was 1) food, 2) sports, 3) Kobe Bryant trial, 4) Victoria's Secret fashion show, 5) combinations of the above. For example, on the local news their was a 10 minute piece on the football team's annual pig out (or something to that effect).

As I bemusedly flipped through the various channels available, I thought "surely something must be happening out there besides this stuff." Most of what I saw was fluff not substance. The "local" channel had a variety of purchased clips that are sold to all the channels (the recreated studies and "medical" information). There were lots of info-mercials.

After watching this stuff for a while, it became obvious why more folks in the US aren't in an uproar over what is happening in the world - they don't know it is happening. Or they may be numbed out by what is being passed off as "news." Maybe, it was just a fluke? I could hope so, but I know that there was really major stuff happening in the world. As far as the "news" went in southern Oregon, it was all quiet everywhere ... oh yeah those are some models they had for the Victoria's Secret fashion show.