Checking Out the Checkout

firedoglake has this, which made me think about checking out at the grocery store. It's gotten very depressing these days.

Standing around waiting for my turn, I find myself glancing at the magazines available. I see things about space aliens, celebrities I've never heard of falling in and out of love and marriage, ways to look better this winter, recipes for weight loss and diabetes management, the low-down on upcoming plot lines for soap operas, and suggestions for teens who want to get a great date for the prom (start wooing that high school hunk now!)

Okay, what should I expect, right? I'm in a supermarket. Still, one would think that there would be something - anything - examining the fact that our president lied to bring us into a war, that the party that controls our government is plagued by corruption and influence peddling, that we are facing an imminent oil crisis, that our lands are being raped for profit as never before, that the administration is full of incompetents and traitors, that anyone who expresses honest (and, yes it's patriotic!) dissent is labeled a supporter of terrorists, or that our congress would like nothing more than to take away what little we do for our poorest citizens.

Just one article? I'm not even asking for a cover feature.

I understand the market (not the supermarket) decides what goes in the magazines that fill the checkout racks. They're filled with what people want, and it seems that what we want is nothing more than to pretend that this ain't happening, to utterly divorce ourselves from reality and live in a fantasy land of soap operas and chocolate pie.

Kind of like Dubya.

Tagged: politics