MURDER DEATH NEWS

In the morning, we need the weather news. Outside our windows, it's grey tall buildings. Then, the latest news -- last night's drama, an accident, a murder, death, divorce -- we're already involved, interested , because it isn't us, it's them.

Our kings and our queens -- the sports heros, politicos, songsters, rappers, top of the chart talent -- perfect diversion from disasters, floods, fires, bombs, disease, the starving, the abused, the homeless.

No point in trying to go on with this list, you know what it is. Murder death disaster news wouldn't exist if our need for it didn't exist.

Why does it?

Why is our hunger for it, our need for it growing?

Is it our already over-crowded world, the doomful predictions based on history that move us, hurry us faster toward more, worse, worser, and beyond worst?

Will my turning it off, tuning it out make any difference? Except make me feel a very tiny bit safer, in the cocoon of house/home, America. NY where we're more or less safely monied, tucked into familiar everything.

What does all this mean -- am I complaining or bragging, because we're here and all that is there ... not surrounding me, really quite nicely, quite far far away.