Preface:

I'm often scratching my head over what I hear people on the news saying and asking, often wondering what set the hounds loose on a celebrity; I'm often surprised at my changed reaction on seeing the principals involved in news stories I heard or read and stand suitably chastised. Likewise, "what I thought" has often been turned on its head when I have gained more background information on an issue, a person, an event, current or historical. It has something to do with Primary Sources. It has a lot to do with looking for the human factor involved, the personal human stories behind the news, behind history. The news, conversely, has become something of a Byzantine story factory since it expanded from 30-60 minutes nightly to 24-hour news cycles of competing purveyors of news, which now even includes talk-show opinion, both of the host and of the public.

I have seen breaking news that made me question if I were somehow involved in a delusional vision I could not shake off, wiping at the television screen as if it could somehow solve the disconnect. The first time that happened was while casually watching the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "Is this real?" "Am I seeing this?" It happened when watching the smoking twin towers when the first imploded, full of people, the way we have seen so many buildings carefully and gracefully collapse inward in engineered demolition.


(why is demolish spelled with an s and demolition with a t?)


I have been on the site of big news stories that are only a small part of the whole story; contextualization of news helps put stories in perspective. We see where the cameras focus, what the lens shows us, and then the 24-hour news cycles broadcast the bits repeatedly in a decontextualization of the news.