Last night the earthquake in Haiti was the big topic on our usual news programs, as it should be, but I can only watch so much video of frightened, broken, dead and dying people before I just don’t want to see anymore. I can read about and hear people talk about tragedies just fine, and I do want to see some video footage, because nothing brings home the nightmare of what has happened like video footage, but when it’s the same two or three clips played over and over on half the screen while the talking heads keep talking about it, eventually, I don’t want to see it anymore. It stops being informative and starts to feel more like tragedy porn. Showing a couple of video clips is good, but showing them non-stop in a continual loop isn’t necessary. I don’t know why news shows do that. Sensationalism, I guess.

I asked Lin if we could fast forward through the part about Haiti, but not having already spent a good part of his day reading and hearing about it, he wanted to keep watching it. I told him that was fine, as I wanted to go check my email anyway. As I was getting up to leave the room, he asked me what I would do if something like that happened in our own town or neighborhood and I couldn’t just turn off the TV to avoid it.

“There’s a big difference between sitting and watching the same four twenty-second clips on a TV news show and having something like this outside my front door. If it happened here, I could be outside helping the people who needed help. I can’t help the people in Haiti. All I can do is watch from a distance with my hands tied.”

Then he said he didn’t remember me being this upset about that tsunami that killed so many people. I was upset about it. It too was a horrible tragedy. But … we didn’t have a giant high definition TV sitting in our living room, and we didn’t watch TV news at all back then. I only saw what I wanted to see, and when I had seen the devastation enough to inform me of the extent of the horror, I didn’t have to keep seeing the same footage over and over again while the talking heads babbled in the background … in full color high definition detail.

Really, I wish we didn’t watch TV news anymore. Olbermann and Maddow are interesting, and I do somewhat enjoy their programs. Olbermann informs me of what stupid person said something completely stupid (like the latest crap from Rush Limbaugh and his ilk), and Maddow is very good at uncovering interesting bits of information and odd connections in our political world, but both of them have their own biases and do make the same sort of factual mistakes (or exaggerations) as any opinion reporter does. They aren’t news reporters. They don’t just present facts and let the facts form opinions in the viewers’ minds. They have opinions, and they want everyone to come to agreement their opinions are correct. Nothing at all wrong with that. It has its place in the news world, but when I want to be informed of what is going on in the world, I want that information to be as opinion free as possible.

Lin seems to be addicted to his daily dose of TV news though, so I guess we’ll be watching Olbermann and Maddow until they get canceled at some far point in the future. Well, Lin will be watching them while I sit at my computer. I’m pretty much done with TV news and have been for a very long time. Too much opinion and not enough hard fact.

Oh, and as I headed to the den to get away from the non-stop video clips of Haiti, I asked Lin who he thought would be the first Christian evangelical loudmouth to condemn Haiti and determine this was an act of god for some reason or another. As it turns out, it was Pat Robertson who declared that Haiti had been cursed for their “pact with the devil” due to voodoo rituals they performed way back in 1791 before their rebellion against the French colonists. Yeah. Pat never lets me down. He has a godly excuse for every natural disaster. He and Rush Limbaugh (who had some crappy things to say too yesterday) can go to hell.

And now I’m going to stop thinking about Haiti for a while. It’s just too depressing to not have any money to give and no way to get their to help. I hate the feeling of wanting to do something to help and not being able to do so. I’ve already been in a bad headspace the last couple of weeks, and the fact it’s dark, gloomy, and rainy today isn’t helping, though my garden and I are thankful for the rain and more pleasant temperatures. I’m sure I’ll hear and see plenty more about Haiti on tonight’s news broadcasts, whether I want to or not.