Newspapers

Here is a serious question that I want to answer for myself, and I simply don’t know the answer to:

Why do I read newspapers????? HELP!

I remember some years ago that somewhere, somebody started a “good news channel” and it went bust very fast.  Why do we wallow in negativity?  Is it that when we read that there has been a disaster, a murder or an economic credit crunch, it makes us feel better because we have escaped, or because we are part of it, and we feel better to know that there are others in the same boat?  Probably so, because if we hear good news that others are doing well, it makes us feel bad as we ask ourselves “why are we not doing well, and what’s wrong with us?”

What a f*cked up way of thinking. Any time I saw someone else doing well I always thought “how are they doing that, and what can I learn from them?”, but it seems that a lot of people feel better bringing others down to their own level instead of bringing themselves up to others.

A slight example that happened to me today was when I parked a minibus outside a certain bar (which has mainly a daytime trade) with Damien Dempsey posters on the window, and the owner told me to move it as I was taking custom from his bar.  I moved it when he threatened me with the police, even though I had every right to put it there, but I’m too smart to waste time arguing with certain types of people – in case I would become one.  I did point out to him that I had brought about 500 people over the week to Lanzarote by bringing Damien here to play, and that his bar was benefiting from those same 500 people.  His reply was that I didn’t bring Damo here but Magners did, and he knew it for a fact.  While I appreciate Magners´ help and support with the *Magners Irish Sessions*, this gentleman was very wrong with his facts and assumptions.  When I heard him speaking like this I decided that there was no point whatsoever talking any further to someone who knew everthing, and I simply drove away.  A typical example of trying to bring someone else down instead of trying to bring yourself up.  I was even thinking to take a picture of his bar and put it up in Charlies as a place to visit, just to prove the point, but decided that he wouldn’t understand, and while I accept that things are difficult here in Lanzarote at the moment, I can’t understand how trying to shoot each other in the foot is going to help anyone, or all of us.

Anyway, back to my newspaper problem – here are the headlines of The Examiner today. And you tell me why I bother reading them, because I’m f*cked if I know why!

1. There has been a sixfold increase in the number of murders involving knives in the last 5 years in Ireland???

2. Brian Cowen is telling the Irish people that they will have to accept a 10% reduction in living standards because of the global economic crisis???  I presume he means a 10% drop in financial living standards – which is only financial.  I would question that there will be a drop in living standards outside of financial, and would hope that people think the same as I do and that, believe it or not, there is more to life than simply money.  Also, I notice for the last few months that every article that they write about Brian Cowen has the same miserable face picture of him with his head down in despair.

3. The next article is about who owns the rights to the photo used in the election campaign of Barack Obama.  So now all we have to talk about or discuss about the most powerful man on this planet is who owns these rights, and he has only been in office a few weeks!  This leads me to think either he is simply a boring leader or The Examiner editor is a p*sshead who doesn’t have a f*cking clue and couldn’t be bothered to find something intelligent to print.  I hope the latter is the case.

Either way, my question is simple: “Why do I bother to read the newspapers?”  HELP!