Reading your average Internet news site (or liberal blog) can be downright depressing at times. Who wants to see headlines about another 10 soldiers dead in Iraq, or Hurricane Katrina victims being evicted from promised housing, or homeless families standing in line for holiday dinners at the local soup kitchen? We’re Americans, goddammit — we deserve to be HAPPY!!!
Well, buck up, me hearties, and get ready for HappyNews!
Courtesy of the ABC.com news site:
HappyNews is the brainchild of Byron Reese, chief executive of Austin, Texas-based PageWise Inc., which publishes several how-to and advice Web sites. He decided the world needed a refuge from all the unpleasantness served up by newspapers and television news shows, so he launched HappyNews in July.
“This is asking the question, what is news?” Reese said. “News is supposed to give you a view of the world. The news media, the way it has evolved, gives you a distorted view of the world by exaggerating bad news, misery and despair. We’re trying to balance out the scale.”
[A quick Google of Byron Reese’s name didn’t reveal much about him — perhaps some of our Texas BooTribbers can deduce if he has some sort of ulterior motive, like to distract folks from how piss-poor GWB is doing.]
I checked the dictionary — the primary definition of “news” is “newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events”. It doesn’t say anything about it having to be pleasant, or even happy.
More from the article:
Almost all political stories are rejected. Coverage of the war in Iraq has been limited to things such as Marines celebrating Thanksgiving and volunteers sending teddy bears to Iraqi children.
The 30,000 jobs cut by General Motors Corp. last month? You won’t read it in HappyNews, but stories about hiring are welcome. Even sports stories are mostly out of bounds, “because one team wins and one team loses,” Reese explained.
Oh, let’s not talk about what’s going on in Washington…that’s such a downer, man. And who cares about people getting blown up in Iraq? Tis the season to be jolly, after all! So what if 30,000 plus folks aren’t going to be too jolly after they’ve lost their jobs and those Christmas credit card bills come due?
And of course, there’s the obligatory dig at the allegedly liberal media:
Sam Stapp, a security officer in Louisville, Ky., stumbled across it while Web surfing a few weeks ago. He enjoyed the story about the Marines’ Thanksgiving observation and was appalled by the mainstream media’s heavy coverage of the 10 Marines killed in one attack this month.
“It’s strongly tilted negative,” he said of the mainstream media. “They won’t tell you what those same 10 Marines were doing that helped the Iraqi people because nobody cares about that. I’m just sick of it.”
Sure, a lot of the news these days really sucks…but there are plenty of folks on both sides of the political aisle that would love to have more people reading HappyNews and ignoring what skullduggery they’re up to.
Next time you feel like complaining about the mainstream media, just remember, it could be worse…a lot worse…we could have HappyNews.com 24/7.