Greta Thunberg vs Felicity Huffman, or How to Distract

 Fridays typically mean lots of time in the car driving to appointments, which also means lots of times listening to the news. On Friday 13 September, over the course of several hours, with stops and starts, I heard two news stories repeated over and over: Felicity Huffman's sentencing for the college application scandal and "analysis" of the third Democratic Primary debate the night before. Of these two stories, one is meaningful for everyone, and the other is not, and yet they shared almost equal air-time for regular new stories though, thankfully, not in terms of analysis on NPR. I do not deny that the college scandal--rich parents rigging the system so that their already advantaged children gain even more advantage in their applications for college--should be news or that Felicity Huffman should have been sentenced. Did Huffman's sentencing need to be repeated several times throughout the day? Note that the news of her sentencing did nothing to expand upon the wrongness of this "scandal." It was more about Huffman being sentenced than about the wrongness of her actions.

In contrast, Greta Thunberg, a sixteen year-old woman from Sweden, spoke at a protest on the steps of the White House demanding action from our climate-change-denying president. Whether you think, as I do, that climate change is the greatest threat to the future of humanity or not, surely you must agree that climate change is more news worthy than the sentencing of a Hollywood star.

We should not be surprised. For just as the news prioritized Huffman, who has already had her 15-minutes in the spotlight, Thunberg, who doesn't want 15-minutes, the Democratic Primary debate and its analysis emphasized the race to the democratic nomination over the threat of climate change. Only 7% of the 85 questions asked Thursday night dealt with climate change, while a significant portion of the debate focused on the minutia of difference of health care between the leading candidates. Health care is obviously important--more important than the college scandal, yet is it more important than the threat of climate change?

Contemporary news is meant to distract us from the real news. It is a fear-monger that blows up threats that hardly exist, while ignoring the real threats brought on by the "system" we choose to live under. Because, if it can distract us, it protects the system. The rich continue to get richer, and the poor poorer, and the Amazon burns.