CNS for November 20, 2011 Do Something Important Today

We’ve Got News!

There is lots of news today and it all sounds important. Libya, Syria, Greece, Italy, the Euro, the Budget Deal and then the attacks on Newt after his rise to the top of the Republican contenders and the never ending saga of the Wall Street protesters. It all seems so frantic and so important and it all is – to somebody.

When you get down to hard cold truth, however, what I realize after dragging myself through all those stories today is a simple truth. They don’t matter a hill of beans. Those stories have no impact on my life today because: I don’t have any power to affect the outcome of those stories today and nothing I can do is going to make a difference in the future.

Bottom line, reading the news is a total waste of my valuable time.

So where does that leave the Coot’s News Service?

It’s a good question which deserves a good answer. The original thinking of our crack management team here at COC was that we could provide a valuable service to our readers by filtering the myriad news stories each week to find a few really important ones, particularly those stories which were upbeat and inspiring. This meant hours of research reading hundreds of real downer stories in the hope of finding something positive. Talk about a deadly assignment! Over time, the task moved from challenging to impossible and our dynamic research team became demoralized. So we moved on the Plan B.

Plan B was to find one story each week that would put our readers ahead of the pack. That seemed like a realistic ambition but even finding that one story soon became a challenge. I don’t know if the stories got worse or our standards rose higher. Whatever the reason, the challenge of finding that one perfect story got harder each week. And keeping our staff on target harder.

So today, exhausted from a fruitless scouring of the news, I have no choice but to punt. Today, we don’t have a story.

Get a Life!

The unavoidable truth is that nobody NEEDS the news, nobody BENEFITS from the news. News is an incredible and scandalous WASTE of society’s time and resources. I can confidently state that there is absolutely nothing in the news that you need to know and that you would be much better off walking the dog, playing catch with your grandson or taking your wife to a movie than reading the news.

There! I’ve said it.

But back to the original question about CNS. Does this mean the end of CNS as we know it? Will the delight of checking COC on Sunday’s for insightful commentary and wisdom be gone forever? And the answer is “Of course not.” We know that our readers depend on CNS to brighten their dreary weekends and we take our responsibilities very seriously even if it means continuing to follow the news.

So there will be a new report next week, although just now it is hard to say what it will be. After all, it is seven days away. Who knows? Something important might happen.