From the Hinterlands©

The Library in Fleishmanns is open three days a week, so I will have occasional chances to update my blog. Everybody cheer.

The daily newspaper here is called The Daily Freeman, a paper specializing in the news of the Hudson Valley since 1871. Not a lot of national news here, but it's revealing to examine what stories the editors pick up off the AP. Today, Friday 2 April, here's some of what we get:

• A process story regarding complaints the NYTimes and other major papers received for publishing this photo of the remains of the U.S. contractors killed in Iraq recently. What exactly would not publishing this photograph accomplish? In exchange for respecting the delicate sensibilities of a few of their readers, major newspapers would be failing to accurately inform all of their readers. Television networks avoided video of the bodies. This is bull. The issues raised include questions about why these men were killed, how to avoid this in the future, and other real-world concerns. But not exposing people to video of what actually happened?
• A whoopsie story about David Letterman and CNN miscommunication about a clip Letterman showed of the President boring a small child. This is world news?
• Here's one about the warning labels Bush wants put on condoms. Yeah, that's right, health warning labels on condoms, because they may not be 100% effective in preventing genital warts. So you shouldn't use them at all. Maybe it's only because this is New York, and people here are far more liberal than small town people in the Utah town that banned the U.N. But if this kind of nonsense from the administration is penetrating the American Collective Unconscious, maybe we have a chance in November.

More from Jmylethinks will be forthcoming, but at an abbreviated pace because up here I am cut off from the net four days a week and have, gasp, no cell phone service. At all.

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