Friday, July 17, 2009

Priorities?

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with the world, and why people (Americans especially) have such a hard time figuring out their priorities. For example, if you asked me to name some of the most important events going on over the past month or so, you would get a list that looks a bit like this:
  • The Costa Rican president is still trying to mediate between the two sides involved in the Honduras coup
  • India and Pakistan have agreed to resume negotiations over the Kashmir region; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in India right now
  • Police are investigating a double suicide bombing in Indonesia
  • Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings are continuing in the Senate, she looks to be facing a clear road to being the first Latina Supreme Court justice
  • The CIA is under fire, again, for keeping secrets from Congress
  • California is still in a huge budget crisis.
  • Sarah Palin announced she would step down as governor of Alaska
Pop quiz, how many of you already knew about at least 4 of those? I bet you not very many. Now, wouldn't you expect stories like that to be dominating pages such as Google News? Well, okay, they're dominating my heavily customized news.google.ie page. Switch to a non-personalized news.google.com, however, and you get a much different sight. Suddenly the page is dominated by Michael Jackson (seriously, who cares anymore? Too many people!), Harry Potter, Jon Gosselin, and Walter Cronkite. Switch to charter.net, and suddenly the top searches are "Emmy Nominations", "British Open", and "Jessica Simpson".

People, really? No wonder Americans are regarded as idiots in so many other countries! We are, if this is all that's important to us! We need to start taking more of an active interest in the world around us. For one day (and then hopefully many more) put aside the celebrity news (which is just the same stories applied to different people over and over again, I hope you realize!) and read -- actually, attentively read some type of international news. Then go out, find one person, and tell them about whatever event you just read about. How many of you can say that you've done this before? Think about it. Think about where your priorities should be. I dare you.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

3 comments:

  1. Miss TayJuly 17, 2009 at 11:53 PM

    You know me very well, Anya, so you know that, honestly, I don't really care about celebrities or international news. So, this doesn't really apply to me. But, I do agree. It just seems that the majority of America is more consumed with celebrities and fashion, rather than things that could make history. It's just the way America is. If everyone knew all the issues in America, people would be freaking out. Let the mellow people just chill. We don't want a planet freaking out over something the government can take care of. Though, yes, maybe some Americans want to know why they're being taxed so much. But, not everyone cares, not saying you're wrong. Really, I'm not.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anya PrynnJuly 18, 2009 at 8:35 AM

    you know, tay, i was thinking about you after i wrote this, and i was like "huh. she doesn't care either way. what about that?" and i came to the conclusion that we just have to make people care. not you, 'cause i know you never will. and the more people that know about issues, the more people to try to help fix them. not caring is almost as bad as only caring about the stupid stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Miss TayJuly 18, 2009 at 9:56 AM

    You're living in a dream, sweetheart. A dream.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)