A somewhat gentler rant with literary references

As I glanced at the headlines at the bottom of my computer screen this morning, I saw mention of the upcoming last episode of a television program of which I had never even heard.

There is a passage in one of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories I think about how newspapers seem to consist mostly of reports that Smith had died, conveyed with great earnestness and detail to people who had never known that Smith had been alive.

I fear I am such, in the case of this particular program, and I think I am not the worse for it.

On the other hand, to prove that context is everything, I found myself moved to tears while reading blogs this morning. John's beloved terrier finally went to her rest, and John's account of driving her around for the last time while waiting for the vet to be ready brought tears to my eyes. Recounting it here brings them back.

And Michael (another Michael, one of the gazillion of that noble and illustrious name) announced that he had proposed to his partner of some twenty years now that they can get married. That brought tears of joy, perhaps not as intense but real nonetheless, that this day has come for people all across this land, not just in parts of it.

John's sorrow may be a small story, but it is a true one and has nothing whatever to do with the manufactured emotions that (non)reality television programs foist on the public. And the peaceful happiness of Michael and his Someone (as he calls him on the blog) is more real than most of the stuff you see on the cable news networks.