Virtual Thought

Where would I be without my faithful news outlets dutifully reporting that cats like birds?

Okay, that’s not entirely true… the article is about the recent cat death in Germany. The cat had eaten a bird infected with H5N1 bird flu and consequently sickened and died.

But with photos like these, I just had to poke fun:

Yes. Thank you. I know cats like birds.

In this struggle to have up-to-the-minute news coverage of every little detail because of the transparency afforded by electronic, “new” media I think our more traditional news outlets are flailing and flapping around like flu-addled birds trying to provide us with the detail they think we want. Heck, maybe we think we want it.

I get really nervous when we apply supply-and-demand economics to the news… is it really okay to give us what we want, all the time? Isn’t that how we get Jerry Springer-style sensationalism that focuses entirely too much on couples whose names abbreviate is cute ways (Bennifer, Brangelina, Jessinick… I made that last one up) instead of real issues like the horrible, unjust war in Iraq, the corruption that is increasingly evident in the highest echelons of government, the global warming we brought upon ourselves that we are still denying?

Cats like birds indeed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 1st, 2006 at 1:27 pm and is filed under funny, soapbox, politics, thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.