Saturday afternoon, 19 March, a bright spring day: Libya has knocked Japan right out of the news. The U.S. fired over 100 cruise missiles on Libyan targets, the headlines scream. I’m not even sure what this means. Doesn’t this place us right in the heart of a war? Where is the so-called “broad international coalition”? And if Gadhafi is digging in his heels, doesn’t this mean we are in for a prolonged conflict in northern Africa, kind of how we got into Iraq, going after Saddam Hussein, 8 years ago?
Underneath this horrendous news ran this banner: Japanese radiation spreading, reaching California. Meanwhile, Japan is still reeling from the effects of the massive earthquake and tsunami, thousands killed, thousands still missing. A war and a disaster. Unbearable catastrophe.
Most of us are far away from the sound and fury of
these natural and man-made disasters. Here on a bright sunny spring day in the nation’s capital, life seems serene, benign. It’s hard to imagine the depth and extent of the crises and the human suffering.
The bad news is so bad I don’t know how the journalists are deciding which is more newsworthy. It doesn’t look like any of these events, neither the spread of nuclear radiation nor the spread of war, will end soon. They will linger in reality and in the news for a long time. Good lord, what next?
Underneath this horrendous news ran this banner: Japanese radiation spreading, reaching California. Meanwhile, Japan is still reeling from the effects of the massive earthquake and tsunami, thousands killed, thousands still missing. A war and a disaster. Unbearable catastrophe.
Most of us are far away from the sound and fury of
these natural and man-made disasters. Here on a bright sunny spring day in the nation’s capital, life seems serene, benign. It’s hard to imagine the depth and extent of the crises and the human suffering.The bad news is so bad I don’t know how the journalists are deciding which is more newsworthy. It doesn’t look like any of these events, neither the spread of nuclear radiation nor the spread of war, will end soon. They will linger in reality and in the news for a long time. Good lord, what next?
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