I had the day off yesterday (2/21), so after running some errands I went home to relax. As usual, unless I've rented a video/DVD I was skimming the channels looking for something of interest. As is often the case I found myself glued to the various news channels, seeing how each covered a particular story.

It interesting how there seems to be very little going on anywhere except the up-coming invasion of Iraq (brought to us be the unelected President and his henchfolks), however sometimes there is something that catches the attention of the Powers That Be enough to give that some airtime.

Sadly, it was the tragedy in West Warwick, RI where close to a hundred people (the number of dead may have increased by the time I post this) lost their lives in a nightclub fire. Coming on the heels of an earlier tragedy in Chicago (where about twenty people lost their lives, being shoved and trampled by fellow fleeing patrons) the RI fire had the additional advantage, if you will, of actually video documentation.

Nothing can guarantee that something is newsworthy like video. It's always fascinating to me, when I watch either local or national news, that the destruction of an entire town and the loss of a hundred people in some remote part of the world is barely a 10-second footnote, but if a single-engine plane happens to land in the parking lot of a mall (with no injuries) it can become worthy of several minutes of airtime, simply because somebody happened to be nearby with their Sony camcorder.

I realize that this is nothing new to anyone and that wiser folks than I have discussed the same thing. Still when I find myself watching these events I can't help but try to distance myself enough to remember that there is somebody there in the control room deciding for me just how important this event is and whether it's time to "interrupt this tragedy for a word from our sponsor".