...Why do I Even Bother?


Wherein Our Heroine is a Bit Peeved with the Media.
Dear Reader:

I do understand that I am far from perfect. The entire output of WoT, if collected, could be charitably described as "uneven." However, I don't get paid for this, and you don't have to pay to read it. I am slowly, more or less steadily, acquiring a larger readership (if my site statistics are to be believed), and that is satisfaction enough for me. If there are people out there - friends and strangers - who enjoy consuming the stuff I happen to decant out of my head on a daily basis, well, bully for all of us. It's a fair transaction as far as I'm concerned.

Which brings me to The Washington Post.

The Post has been absolutely mesmerized by the whole cicada thing. Yep, they exist. Yep, they're large. Yep, they're a bit of a phenomenon. Yep, they're noisy. Yep, they go crunch when you step on 'em and splat when you drive into 'em.

Whatever.

Why this has to take up a certain number of column inches every single day is beyond me.

They really have been running nonstop cicada stories since before the buggers emerged. When they may emerge, what their mating habits are, why they take 17 years to do their thing - on and on and on. In fact, they have been doing this long enough that the strain is starting to show.

Take today's story. It contains some truly priceless gems, possibly the most precious of which are the opening 2 paragraphs:

Of the many strange and wonderful qualities of cicadas, the most striking is their utter obliviousness.

They're in their own universe. They do not care about us. They don't care about the war in Iraq, the prisoner abuse scandal, the presidential race, the federal deficit or the rising price of gas. They don't even care about the cats and dogs and birds that sometimes turn them into a snack.

What? Come again? Since when do bugs - any bugs - care about wars, torture (does nobody in the national media have a copy of the Geneva conventions either?) scandals, presidents or presidential races, or the price of gas? Why is a bug's obliviousness worthy of comment?

More importantly, somebody is getting paid to write this? Yes, indeed. Probably not well, but he does get paid. And I am paying my tiny fraction of his salary by being a subscriber. Oy.

He goes on with:

But they teach us something. They remind us that the world isn't about just us.

Funny, that seems to be the point of these fevered maunderings. It's not just all about "us" - it's all about the writer! And the writer has a deadline! His editor has given him the cicada beat, and he must write several hundred (907, to be exact) words on the subject. Pity the poor writer. He comes too late in the cicada rotation to report anything scientific - that was taken up in the early weeks - or anything meaningful - that was the next day, perhaps - so, he just resorts to sort of making stuff up like some unemployed blogger sitting in her living room. How pathetic.

Hopefully, sometime in December, approximately six months after the cicadas have disappeared, the editors at the Post will have found something else to obsess over. For instance, I hear we have an election coming up.
Posted: Tuesday - May 25, 2004 at 08:40 AM         | |

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