One of the great recordings and album titles, Modest Mouse's "Good News for People Who Love Bad News." (2004).
I love that record, funny, enthusiastic, beautifully recorded, but I am not that kind of "people." I, like many of us, like to avoid bad news. I am super-good at minimizing bad news, always trying to see the glimmers of light in the piles of dung.
I do know plenty of folks who love bad news. They love to tell you all the bad news that's fit or unfit to print. You see them coming, it's always a bit of a comedown, and I realize I have to charge myself up a bit, to find the energy to deflect, to reflect and to point out that often we are talking about things that haven't happened yet, and maybe never will happen. Sometimes the best advice: "Let's wait and see." No one knows nothing. And Joe Strummer's great line: "The future is unwritten."
This mid-term election we were swamped with all the pundits and experts who couldn't wait to smack us around with the rise of "election-deniers," and a triumphant Red Wave. We were told that Democrats were sunk, Democracy was on the ropes, it was all gloom and doom and it was all delivered with an smart, all-knowing, enthusiastically peppy, radio and TV friendly voice. Smug, smirking, oozing, slimy, smarmy, "conventional wisdom."
Ha. Fuck.
They were all wrong. So I find myself this morning tuning into NPR radio happy and excited to hear "Good News for People Who Love Good News!" Yes. That's me. Looks like the Dems will hold the Senate, maybe even add another Senator to the mix, and also get awfully close to keeping the House. Turns out Joe Biden is cool! Democracy is Good. Commonsense is ok. Maybe we are gonna muddle thru? Good news, no doubt.
