An Inconvenient Alarmist

Not Gore. Me.

I have a love/hate relationship with online news coverage. Having violently ripped cable and network tv out of our home, I've been spared from ongoing Michael Jackson/Britney Spears/ridiculously trite items that seem to dominate tv reports. On the other hand, I spend a fair amount of time reading online news from the same sources. And do you know which headlines I always click? The most morbid, sensationalist pieces I can find. Let me give you a sample:

21st Century Foot Binding

N Sync Boy in Gay Bar! Read All About It!!!!

Las Vegas Hookers Want You to Love Them in the Morning

Sex Addict Teacher/Nude Photos/You Get the Picture


What's wrong with me? I'm only moderately aware of global events but I can tell you about every murdered child and renegade teacher in the United States. It's as if Giraldo Rivera has taken over my fingers and forces me to read crap. "Don't read about Putin's strained relations with Bush, Kristi. That's boooorrrrring. Oh look..Jessica Biel is auctioning off a date with herself to benefit a teenage amputee." I have not once in my life seen anything that Jessica Biel was in. But I know she loves the teenage amputees.

So here's another manifestation of my news reading habits: I truly believe we're all going to die any minute now. Like before I finish this post. Remember Y2K? Remember the crazies who thought all the airplanes were going to crash into their bedrooms? That was me. Remember Katrina? I read about Katrina coverage and hashed out a survival plan with my husband. Not, "Oh let's be sure we have some blankets and water and extra food stashed in the van in case of an quick escape". No. My plan was more along the lines, "Could we survive in the mountains if all of civilization self destructed? Could we hunt bears?" My husband, being the masculine guy that he is, "Yeah. Of course. I don't think we'll have to...but duh...I could hunt bears." ( That's a joke. Will doesn't hunt and I've never heard him say "duh".)

I'm the girl staying up at night wondering if the one homeless guy in Sandpoint is going to break into my house and kidnap my children. I'm the girl wondering if a runny nose is really the dreaded chicken flu running rampant in my home. I'm the girl who is convinced India is going to take over the United States in our lifetimes because our children are graduating college as illiterates. Don't get me started on all the different scenarios in which the United States is completely dismantled. It doesn't help that my husband won't eat at a restaurant with his back to the door. You know, so he can get any bad guys that come to rob the place. Duh.

So here's where my nuttiness gets complicated. First, a riddle: What do you get when you cross a wacky conspiracy theorist who loves stories of doom with actual predictions of doom? Crazy Kristi, the girl who thinks Mr. Global Warming is going to gun down her family any minute now. With a machine gun. Why are there wildfires in California? Global warming. Devastating hurricanes? Global warming. Unprecedented number of stingrays on the New England coast? Global warming. So now I'm sitting here getting to choose between the crazies who think global warming is going to kill us off in our kid's lifetimes and the crazies who think we have another couple of hundred years or so. What's an alarmist like me to do??? Stephen freakin' Hawking thinks we need to get off the planet! I know nothing about space travel. I'm screwed.

So I'm starting to think that the constant reporting of sensational news bits compared with the occasional mention of the earth rapidly heating tells us a great deal about ourselves. Maybe Americans feel so helpless in the face of global warming that we'd rather read about gay N Sync boys as a form of relief. Relief Roman circus style. Here's a headline that is sure to get our attention:

"Gay N Sync Boy Travels to Space to Escape Effects of Global Warming"

Beat that, ABCnews. So I'm off to go build my spaceship. Wish me luck.

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