Ginia Bellafante’s friend has a very odd definition of what it means to tune out the news. In a recent New York Times article on liberals who have decided their mental health would be better if they stopped paying attention to the news (gift link) in the Age of Trump II, Bellafante writes:
When I spoke with a friend in Brooklyn a day or two after Donald Trump won, he told me he had committed to reading only the print paper — and just in the morning, forgoing any possible all-consuming afternoon digression into whatever might be up with Tulsi Gabbard. When I checked with him earlier this week, he was still maintaining the ritual and it felt good, he said.
Someone who reads a newspaper every day, whether in print or in digital, is actually at the high end when it comes to news consumption. Compared to most people, he is extraordinarily well-informed. Although Bellafante doesn’t tell us what he cut out of his news diet, if he’s decided to forego cable news and politically oriented social media, he may be even better informed than he was when he was jacked in to the national conversation for many of his waking hours. As I like to say, friends don’t let friends watch cable news.
When Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 while losing the popular vote by a substantial margin, it set off a frenzy of news consumption and the rise of the #Resistance — hyper-well-informed liberals and progressives who devoted much of their time and emotional energy to opposing Trump through actions such as the 2017 Women’s March. News consumption soared. You can’t stay it didn’t matter; Trump did, after all, lose to Joe Biden in 2020. Continue reading “There’s nothing wrong with cutting back on news; plus, updates from Cambridge and CommonWealth”
