You know, there’s something to be said for being uninformed.
I’ve been out of the loop for a week. I haven’t watched or read any news and I haven’t been on the Internet very much. So I wondered, has anything new, unexpected, out of the ordinary, or slightly remarkable occurred over the past seven days? Well, today I had some time to catch up on the national happenings that I’ve missed. I had to time to become that blessed Informed Person again. Here’s the information from this past week that I just learned:
M. Night Shyamalan and Will Smith released a horrible, clumsy, boring, predictable big budget sci-fi movie that relies on cliches and special effects… A bunch of maniacs on the Internet got all upset about a Cheerios commercial because it depicts a bi-racial family… A bunch of petty, overly sensitive blowhards got all upset because a basketball player used the phrase “no homo”… A Planned Parenthood abortionist in Delaware is under investigation for Gosnell-like atrocities, yet a bunch of delusional liberals are still claiming that most abortion clinics are wonderful, joy filled bastions of peace and freedom… The IRS spent tax money making a video of their employees dancing, meanwhile testimony indicates that their targeting and persecution of conservatives was directly ordered by Washington… John McCain went overseas and had a slumber party with terrorists then came back and yelled at Rand Paul for being a little concerned about it… A five year old kid brought a plastic cowboy pistol on the school bus to show his friends and was promptly suspended for two weeks, but only after being locked in a room at the school and interrogated and terrorized for two hours before his parents were even contacted…
And I think that sums it up. So to answer my original question: No. Not at all. Nothing new or different. See, I’ve always lectured about the importance of “being informed” and keeping up with the “news” and being knowledgeable about “current events,” but now I’m beginning to question that philosophy. Do you really need to remind yourself forty times a day that the government is corrupt and run by crooks, or that our school system is a dystopian nightmare, or that Hollywood sucks, or that John McCain is a stupid old man, or that people get more offended when an athlete uses a politically incorrect colloquialism than when a doctor crushes a baby’s skull and tosses its body in a plastic bag?
I’d hate to even see what a current events quiz would look like nowadays. Question 1: Which cereal prompted a bunch of racial slurs on YouTube? Question 2: How many eugenicists and abortionists were given speaking slots at the global Girl Scouts conference this week? And so on. I think, if I’m taking the quiz, I’d leave all the answers blank and just hand the paper in with a copy of The Book of Revelation and a note that says, “We are here.” Now give me an ‘A.’
Don’t get me wrong, being “informed” is great. In fact, I’m in news radio so I have a vested financial interest in convincing you that you need to know “what’s going on.” But these days it’s more important to have wisdom, character, and virtue than it is to simply have information. You’re better off being oblivious if you don’t have the spiritual and mental capacity to correctly process everything. We all preach “Be Informed!” but then we forget to preach the necessary prerequisite, which is “Be a critical thinker with a functioning moral compass.” If you’re not the latter, then you don’t need to be the former.
Join the conversation!
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.