These are 'interesting' times
There is an old Chinese curse that says: "May you live in interesting times."
Last week was certainly interesting.
We'd had two weeks of posturing over what the secretary of state called the "gravest crisis" on the Korean peninsula in 60 years, and the talking heads filled the TV with warnings of impending nuclear war.
All that got blown off the front page of every newspaper in America by a pair of pipe bombs.
The Boston Marathon Bombings launched what was arguably the largest manhunt in U.S. history since the Army was turned out to look for John Wilkes Booth. The pressures of modern media -- the public demands to know what you've done for them in the last 60 seconds -- led to some bad, erroneous reporting, filled, between the few real facts available, with hours of talking heads making assumption after presupposition on the flimsiest of rumors. Since it's the American way to point fingers when things go wrong, the FBI came in for criticism, yet, in the end, got their man in an amazingly quick period of time. Then some of our congressmen, who seemed to have forgotten we're a nation of law, promptly convicted the suspect (hang 'em, then hold the trial) and advocated treatment that, in the past, has led to torture. Justice, which is far more satisfactory in the end, was being trampled under calls for hot-headed revenge. Cooler heads will eventually prevail -- we hope.
Then there was a poison letter (chemical weapon) attack on the president, a congressman and a judge -- by an Elvis impersonator. We'll let the late night comics play with that one -- serious as it was.
In Texas, a terrible tragedy in an industrial accident where they're still trying to figure out the final death toll, which was close to 10 times what Boston lost but seemed to fall into, at best, second place in the news coverage. In any other week, it would have been the biggest story of all.
Canada broke up an al-Qaeda plot to destroy a passenger train. There was a mass shooting in Seattle (but according to the Senate, that's not a big deal).
It was an "interesting" week. Now, let's all take a deep breath and get back to our "reality" shows.
-- Kelly Everitt
- -- Posted by shockwave on Wed, Apr 24, 2013, at 9:54 AM
- -- Posted by TundraRat on Wed, Apr 24, 2013, at 10:59 AM
- -- Posted by OpinionMissy on Fri, Apr 26, 2013, at 11:40 AM
- -- Posted by sara-connor on Sun, Apr 28, 2013, at 6:50 AM
- -- Posted by lamont on Sun, Apr 28, 2013, at 10:42 AM
- -- Posted by Trouble2011 on Mon, Apr 29, 2013, at 12:48 PM
- -- Posted by lamont on Mon, Apr 29, 2013, at 1:24 PM
- -- Posted by Trouble2011 on Tue, Apr 30, 2013, at 10:30 AM
- -- Posted by lamont on Tue, Apr 30, 2013, at 7:21 PM
- -- Posted by lamont on Tue, Apr 30, 2013, at 7:44 PM
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