Just a little while ago, a friend of mine posted to Facebook about the high death toll from some attacks in the Middle East being mostly ignored by mainstream American media. It’s a typical complaint, one that I even agree with. In fact my comment to that status was “That’s because people outside the US aren’t people, especially if they’re yucky brown people. Duh!”
Then I thought about it some more.
While it is in fact a shame that such disasters on other continents get mostly glossed over, and that there are often crypto-racist reasons for it… Have you looked at the world news section over on Google News or something? Every single damn article is about either some political scandal or some explosion or natural disaster or attack somewhere that left a nasty death toll. Imagine if all of those always made the headline news.
We’d be right back at square one, in that you’d just tune it all out after a while.
Then the mold is broken by some news that doesn’t involve tons of devastation, such as Prince George’s birth or something. Nice to have happy news for once, right? And then the response is “Why should I care about that? I’m an American, damn it!”
I’m beginning to think all anyone really cares to talk about with international events is whether or not anyone should be talking about it.
This has been Day 90 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 13.