That Almost Never Happens

I'm not overtly political, but I never hid the fact I like Ted Kennedy. We came down on the same side for a lot of hot-button political issues. Plus, he did a lot for both the state of Massachusetts and it's residents. When you come right down to it, it was a pretty simple formula: he was from my state and all the women in my life like him, which is usually good enough for me (even now I wonder who's taking the news worse: my mom, Liz or Kennedy's wife). So I was saddened to hear about his passing early this morning. Obviously he had been in failing health, but you never got the sense that the end was this near. On the whole its just a sad story and there really is nothing more you can say about it.

Instead, I'll shift the focus a little bit. A surprising fact about the news was that I found out by actually reading a newspaper. Most of the time I'll get my news from various Internet sources or by turning on the TV, but this morning I made my way downstairs without turning on either and saw the large headline on the Boston Globe. Now, as I had said Senator Kennedy had been in failing health and the Globe probably had the issue ready to go, only needing to fill in the appropriate dates to finalize the story. Still, when you stop and think about the world we live in today, with the constant "breaking news," when was the last time you walked past a newspaper and the headline actually broke news to you? In this day and age, by the time a paper comes out the news is usually 8-12 hours old.

You almost need to have blinders on to the world to make it until the morning to see yesterday's news. I typically go to bed sometime around midnight, by which time news has broken, been reported on, jackasses like me have commented on it on their blogs and we've moved on to the next breaking news story. Even if actual big news breaks overnight the newspapers wouldn't have time to run with it. Gone are the days of iconic headlines. Now, people just go for shock value. Maybe, given the way that Kennedy was an old-school Senator, it's appropriate that I learned of his death in an old-school way. Either that or I should turn my TV on first thing in the morning like the rest of the world.