Abandoning My News Diet

I wrote in July about cutting back on my consumption of news, and in August about how bad a steady diet of news can be for our mental health. But that all went out the window this week. Whenever we weren’t busy with something else, Jennifer and I were glued to the television — CBS, MSNBC, CNN, even Fox. There was a brief interlude Wednesday morning when, sickened at the possibility that Trump might have won, we thought we might never look at any news again for the rest of our lives, but that only lasted about an hour.

All that TV news allowed us to make short work of the morning paper. We were able to skip 80% of the articles because we already knew what was in them. (Speaking of newspapers, did I detect a hint of the New York Times’ editorial attitude toward the president in this morning’s front-page headline? While many papers announced “Biden Wins,” the Times went with “Biden Beats Trump.” Oof.)

Our week of news consumption culminated last night with watching Biden’s acceptance speech, listening to him talk about cooling the divisive rhetoric, bridging our differences and healing the country. What a revolutionary concept.

Of course there was no avoiding Trump’s insistence that he had actually won the election, and that his lawyers would go to court Monday to contest the results. My feeling is, if that’s the way he wants to spend the next couple of months, more power to him. Better than canceling another nuclear arms treaty or declaring war on Iran. (I found myself wondering yesterday whether his aides suggested to the guy who carries the nuclear football that he make himself scarce for a few minutes while they broke the news to Trump that he’d lost.)