Media Madness!

What I will never quite understand is our fascination with all things sad. People today, are fed by incessant news, round the clock, over and over, of violence, terrorism, murder, suicide, kidnapping, rape, drug abuse, etc..Its either that or its our fascination with all things hollywood..brangelina, britney spears..heck we have our very own saifeena now! The entertainment section of any newspaper has the same old stories over and over again, with just new names in it..its almost like the folks over at the newspaper office have templates for who's dating whom, who's marrying whom, who's getting divorced, which is the latest boxoffice hit/dud..and so on..Why are we so fascinated with all this? More seriously, where does this constant information overload end?

And having said this, I've got to talk about MJ..I've never been a big fan of his music or anything, but like Obama said of MJ, some people grow larger long after they're gone..the ensuing media madness surrounding MJ's passing has got the entire planet transfixed..never mind third world poverty, hunger, Darfour, Somalia, the Indo-Pak relationship, climate change, the G8 summit, etc..all thats on TV these days is about MJ..one way or another. Why, I ask must we be so interested in MJ or his life? If its his work we value, lets just celebrate that, why focus on his life outside of music? Does it really matter?

We have got to become more discerning viewers, listeners and readers. Learn to filter information before we take it all in. As I write this, I'm going to tune out a few things from my mindspace for a few days, and this includes news updates, social networking and email forwards (I wish I could do away with email altogether, but that doesn't seem likely).

On a different note, been reading Salman Rushdie's novel, Shame. Like other Rushdie novels, it makes you reflect, its dark in parts, and makes you reflect on the novel long after you've finished reading it. I've struggled with it, its by no means an easy read, going back and forth in time, and moving from real to the imaginary very quickly..hope to finish reading this quickly and move on to somethin lighter, maybe I'll pick up Wodehouse all over again.. :)

M.