a load of public spiritedness

"all the news that's fit to print"

i am not much of a television viewer and i gave up on television news well be for i deserted the medium in 2012...that doesn't mean i have isolated myself from "the news"...or that i don't try to access a variety of outlets and viewpoints in an effort to find some notion of what is actually going on...admittedly i do tend to focus on the times here and the reasons are simple...firstly the times is "the paper of record" and has an influence on how ( and what ) news is reported beyond its readership...and secondly because of its exuberant elitism...which it denies editorially but exposes in both its advertising and its reportage...this week the times has been buried under the covid-19 "pandemic"...it simply cannot escape it any more than the rest of the media can...it is inescapable unless you shut down the electronics and go for a walk or find a book to read ( even though i am rereading william mcneill's "plagues and peoples"...a fair read about the impact of disease on human history...however it is the concept of macroparasitism he relates that is the most interesting, and valuable, part of the book )...being informed is necessary...particularly relative to this disease...still...it can overwhelm and panic people...balance is as necessary as information...

and the sunday times is assaying to deliver public spirited information today in a "special section" that landed on my deck with the rest of the paper this morning...it is informational...

with some pandemic history a la mcneill ( although mcneill goes much farther back in human history and on a much broader scope )...showing that fear and widespread disease are probably symbiotic...

and helpful tutorials on how to wash your hands and clean "often touched surfaces"...after this point in the "special" section...

lapses, in my estimation, into subjective territory with suggestions for recipes that sound repulsive and some suggested viewing i believe i will skip...mostly because i hold their film reviews in the same mistrust that bitter experience has taught me to ignore their book reviews...

on the last page of the section the interests of the elite bore through as the times councils us not to takeout money out of 401ks or "the market" with a sub-text of "for god's sake there's been enough panic that has cost the wealthy trillions of dollars, let's not add to their misery by further reducing 'the market's' value"...

the front page becomes downright disingenuous...why would a conservative push to make private loss a public debt be "unlikely"? it is a tactic as old as the imperial senate of rome and feeding at the public trough is a sure way to enhance gain wealth and status...ask congress...and if the hoi polloi have no cash the consumerist system cannot extract it...cash as elitist self-defense...we can live with the epithet "class traitor" as long as there is money in it...

finally...overshadowed as it is by the dire news abroad, the "T" style magazine "design" issue came with the paper today...and even an issue ostensibly about "design" in things like architecture and furniture cannot help but belabor me with a section of hideous "women's fashion"...that's $10288 worth of clothing in that photo...pardon me...your elitism is showing.