We Love The Stars Too Fondly

So, let’s pay the cat tax right up front. This is Oreo, also long departed. She was shy and we knew the end was near when she stopped being world-class aloof and reclusive and actually wanted to start curling up on folks’ laps for naps. When she started plotzing on The Long-Suffering Wife,

Yesterday I expressed frustration about the way our current political and social climate has destroyed my trust in much of mainstream media, and how angry it makes me that I can’t get accurate information any more. Those feelings were poked at again today with the passing of Ted Turner, who may have been a loose cannon in many ways, but he created CNN which, for a news junkie like me, used to be like high-grade heroin to an addict.

My news obsession goes back to at least my junior year of high school (long, long before the Internet, CNN, cell phones, and social media), where we got subscriptions to the New York Times and had a couple of classes where that daily print edition was a key part of sevral related classes. Going to Annapolis as a midshipman didn’t help – if you know what the daily routine is like there for plebes, you’ll understand. We got the Washington Pos and Baltimore Sun every day at about 04:00 and had to fill our heads with facts and trivia for “come around” before breakfast. And thus were obsessive habits (and psychoeses) established and cemented.

When I moved to Los Angeles, or more specifically, Orange County (next county to the south from LA proper, home of UC Irvine where I went to school for four years), I had a subscription to the Orange County Register. When I finally moved to Los Angeles, I switched to the Los Angeles Times for almost 50 years.

I also have had over a dozen magazine subscriptions for decades, but those are more focused in terms of subject matter. I did have subscriptions for years to Time and Newsweek, but dropped them ten years ago when I started getting so much more of my news from the internet. But somewhere along the line I started picking up online newspaper subscriptions. New York Times. Washington Post. LA Times. Kansas City Star. Columbus Dispatch.

So with all of that as background, it is significant that with the takeover of the great mainstream media outlets by oligarchs and international conglomerates, and the way all of those oligarchs and corporate toadies have kowtowed to Trump and MAGA and the right-wing cult, I have walked away from them ALL. I haven’t made a big thing about it, but it’s been years now since I’ve had a subscription to the NY Times, Washington Post, or LA Times. I almost never watch CNN. (Obviously, the fundamental right-wing media outlets like Fox News and NewsMax and OAN have NEVER been watched in this household, and if they’re on in the waiting room at the doctor’s office or in a restaurant I’ll either turn them off or find somewhere else to be. The lowest of the low, the slimiest of the slimy.) When Musk bought Twitter, I stopped cold turkey and moved on to Mastadon, Spoutible, Bluesky, and Threads.

I have looked for other outlets that have stayed true to journalistic principles, and I make a point to subscribe to make sure they have that tiny bit of support that I can offer. The Philadelphia Enquirer is one of my go-to sources. Since moving to Hesperia, the San Bernardino Sun is surprisingly good at delivering even-handed coverage of local news. And I still get the online Springfield Reporter from my old home town in Vermont, although that’s sadly mostly for the obituaries.

I’m always on the prowl for other reliable, honest, reputable news sources to support and utilize. In a comment on yesterday’s post here, Jemima Pett recommended The Guardian. I also like Reuters. Yes, done and done, both.

Giving up 50 years of habits and a comfortable lifestyle and walking away from these old news sources is difficult, but it has to be done. When the NYT is running “serious” articles about putting Trump’s image on Mount Rushmore, they’re no longer any more legitimate than those old National Enquirer newspapers at the grocery store checkout lines, with headlines about ‘BatBoy” and how some woman in Kentucky is now pregnant by aliens.

Sad.