Bad things happen

Yesterday, a tragic event happened in Minneapolis, which happens to be sort of where I grew up, so it's especially sad and spine-tingly to watch the scenes of the collapse. The bridge collapse during rush hour must have been terrifying and the families of the the dead, injured, and the missing have my whole-hearted sympathies.

Yesterday, more tragic events happened in another part of the world. I'm not comparing numbers, or saying that the more people who are killed makes one tragedy more significant than another. And I'll readily admit that the closer something is to your home, the more personal ties you have to it, the more significant an event becomes to you. But I wonder how the four major cable news networks that are devoting hours and hours of coverage to this event fail to see the irony of their complete lack of mention of other tragic events happening in the world. Obviously we care more because this happened in the US, and probably because it was a seemingly random and senseless event.

But seriously people..."we" spend billions of dollars invading a foreign country, illegally occupying it for years, destroy its infrastructure, so what entitles us to the luxury of looking the other way as hundreds and thousands die over there day, week, and month?

Anyway. Thank god it's shark week on the Discovery Channel, so I have something else to watch on TV rather than being incensed and depressed by the TV news. But why do they stop at shark week? Why don't we get camel week, or tiger week? Or pony week? I love ponies too.