"This is Your Brain on News"

...or not to have a brain at all, as Dan Quayle might say.

Still kind of busy over here, but I've got a few minutes to note this observant post by Harry Shearer--he concludes with the quote above. Shearer confines his analysis to coverage of the presidential debates...and the Paris Hilton nonsense, but you certainly can see the same attitude...or similar attitudes...towards other issues, to a greater or lesser extent.

Anyway--the net result, no pun intended, is that "news" becomes as vapid as...well, the Paris Hilton saga. Which, if it was mere entertainment, would be one thing...when people's lives and the country's reputation is at stake, it becomes something far more serious.

And that might explain why people are turning to things like blogs: if the news industry is as broken as the political system, alternatives might well be the only sane response...although I guess that depends on your definition of sanity and/or reality, e.g. idiots Mort Kondrake, Mara Liasson, and Chuck Krauthammer, who ignore the bugfuck rantings of their wingnut faction while bashing those of us in the reality-based community. Then again, reality itself is a bit of a challenge to them, considering how badly they've fucked things up.

Back later...