It’s News--but It’s Also Garbage
There are umpteen million stories in the Naked Metropolis and if you’re not careful, they completely take over your garage. It had come to this: Not even the real estate agent could be nice about the boxes of old news files that had come to resemble a cross between a Somalian termite mound and a small Winnebago. “Ugh! Get rid of ‘em! Ugh!” she barked sweetly, touching up her lipstick and backing out the door with a look that said, “Dear God, who are these people?” And she’s a relative of ours.
But it’s not easy to just get rid of yesterday’s news when someone has paid you for years to gather it. You feel guilty. Especially here. Who will preserve history if not the scrollkeepers of this vast, shifting region? Also, that Tommy Lee mug shot might turn out to be a collectible.
Fortunately, the archives included recent real estate sections, which carried compelling news for those of us who had overpaid for cute ranch houses at the top of the market 10 years ago. Finally, it was a seller’s market. Your correspondent was, as the agents say, motivated. The boxes would have to go if the house were to be sold.
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The “archive,” as mentioned, was many-volumed. Numerous manila folders. Numerous printouts and notes. Stunningly bad cursive. Still, you could learn things, thumbing through old research. For example: Who knew “Whittier Earthquake--1987” could hold this many spider eggs?
And you could see trends. Right there, actually, in that file marked “Trends.” It was empty. But here was something: “Teen Runaways.” Also “Homeless Runaway Teens.” Also “Teen Moms” and “Teens Who Kill Parents” and “Hollywood Street Kids” and “Teen Prostitute Murders.” Here was one titled, bluntly, “Bad Seeds.”
And here were “Crack Babies” and “Crack Moms” and “Meth Labs” and “HEROIN.” And on an up note, here were “Cerritos Plane Crash” and “San Berdu Train Wreck.” Also “Flood,” “Meat Bees” and “Brushfires--Misc.” Here were “Riot Flashpoints” and “Riot Anniversary” and “Riot Lessons.” Not much in that one. But here were thick dossiers from a stint at the old Herald Examiner: “Cotton Club Murders.” “Fat Pets.”
The files seemed to want to say something, maybe about disaster and pathology being all too common. Except that outside this box-stuffed garage, disaster and pathology were nowhere to be seen. All too common were chirping birds and rustling palms and the neighbor kid coming down the sidewalk now for the trillionth time on his skateboard. A tiny jet crossed the sky and didn’t come close to crashing. What it all said was, the worst actually almost never happens. We picked up the first box and made for the Dumpster, encountering not one corpse, runaway, brush fire or meat bee.
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What is it about news? Don’t you find it comical yet annoying? Don’t you wish it would just take a day off sometimes? Long after the boxes had been hauled off to the nearest (no doubt leaking) landfill, the tone of their contents lingered, raising questions about every update and headline.
For example, if life was--as life is--generally uneventful, weren’t all these dire reports and worst-case scenarios misleading in a way? If things usually worked out for the best--as things usually do--wasn’t it untruthful to make people worry so incessantly about so many things?
People ask: Why isn’t there more good news? The stock answer to which is: Because good news is boring. But actually, common is the more accurate adjective. The norm is for the earth not to quake, the train not to wreck, the teens to grow up to be taxpaying adults. Social Security doesn’t go broke, Japan Inc. and Bill Gates don’t take over the planet. Cops and politicians succumb to their weaknesses only to the point that the rest of us let them. The world’s vexations boil down to nothing more dramatic than less versus more, worse versus better, this versus that.
Bad things make news because bad things are uncommon. Also, worrying about bad things is what we do now in lieu of prayer. Paying respects to the worst that can happen makes people feel that they’re taking their fears seriously--an attitude that they hope will magically prevent those fears from being realized. Or something. Your correspondent would report that Freud came up with this prayer-worry insight, except that Freud, according to the news, has been utterly discredited.
So the questions remain unanswered and the worst-case scenarios keep coming, even on long weekends and holidays. Still, there are umpteen million garages in the Naked Metropolis, and to the extent that it’s good news, sources say at least one is finally clean.
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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.
