WHAT NEWS?

Avoiding the news whenever I can is a marvelous thing. No longer do I deliberately put myself through the misery of listening to the blathering of those on the right who remind us that Jesus wouldn't have been crucified if he'd had an AK-47, or those on the left warning that any parent questioning the necessity of Drag Queen Reading Hour is a card-carrying member of the Fox News fan club. 

I'd fallen prey to those who forever promised that any day now Matt Gaetz would be in an orange jumpsuit for his crimes of... what were his crimes again? Sex with teens? I don't remember.  The fact that Gaetz is alive and (physically) well contradicts all those laptop jockeys and YouTubers who gleefully stated that he had been DESTROYED by Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel last night. And the night before that. And the night before that.

But there's a difference between avoiding news and living entirely off the grid. So, yes, there are major stories that somehow get on my radar. For me to explore them beyond the headline, I need to ask myself one question: Will reading the details of this event improve my life, mood, or overall wellbeing? The answer tends to be no.

So when I found out that the latest mass shooter was an Asian who killed Asians, I didn't know for sure if he would have been charged with a hate crime had he lived. And if he wouldn't have been, well, why not? Killing 10 Asians sure sounds like hate, right? Hey, he killed himself -- that makes 11 times the hate!

Then there's the SNAFU regarding classified documents found in the possession of Joe Biden outside the White House. Did he or his minions say with a straight face that any concern over security issues were unnecessary because they were in his garage next to his beloved Corvette? Were they able to suppress a chuckle when bragging that Biden ordered the Justice Department to search his home(s) to discover any more top secrets? That's like me telling the Feds, Gee, can you search the box in my closet labeled "B-Movie Posters" to find out if I have any B-movie posters? And if you do, I'm not going to rest until I find out just how they got there!

But the best story -- the one I kinda poked around in because I feel an emotional connection to it -- concerns Alec "Not My Trigger Finger" Baldwin being charged with two charges of involuntary manslaughter on the Rust set -- an incident that happened a year and a half ago. (Would you have been free to do your thing for 18 months following that crime?) 

I'm convinced that had big-mouth Baldwin just kept quiet rather than claim he didn't pull the trigger AND continued to post wacky photos of him and his ever-growing family of travelling misfits AND show the same remorse a shark does who's just chowed down on a Cape Cod swimmer, he might be in a better position in the eyes of both the law and the public. It just doesn't help your cause when you claim to be the victim when a woman is dead and a man is severely wounded from a gun that you were holding.

No doubt the likes of Greg Gutfeld and Laura Inghram have loudly started the countdown clock until Baldwin's imprisonment, even as deep down inside they know that his lawyers are already trying to figure out a way to keep their client out of the New Mexico prison system, such as convincing him to plead nolo contendre  and paying a fine. But as with those on the left, their audience will forget all the promises their favorite talking heads have made. It helps their life, mood, and overall well-being.

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