USS Hyperbole
No postings because I just got back from a week in France. The trip was meant to be a romantic one so I managed to tear myself away form the Internet for the time being. I still kept up with events with events, checking out the paper in the morning and what not, but for the most part I dropped off the infogrid. What I didn’t realize I had missed until I got back to the States was the amount of hyperbole in the media here. News in Europe is really just that: news. They report the events and let you know what’s happening in the world. There is very little opinion and very little slant. But more importantly, there is a lack of hyperbole — a lack of the biggest, most world-devastating, evil, gianormous kind of talk. Obviously the US media has its causes for being the way it is (money) and that has been discussed by media pundits aat great length, but what’s not often discussed is how our news sources distort the truth not through slant but through ridiculous exaggeration. Our media presents us with information through a giant fish eye lense and every event is world-shattering and massive. This effect is worsened by a news cycle that only seems to be capable of presenting us with three or four stories, void of important detail. Every story becomes bigger than it is. Every danger looms larger. Every story gives greater reason to fear that the world is coming apart at the seams.