Post Pandemic Normal

Some of what’s changed won’t be coming back to pre-pandemic normal. My newspaper reading habits won’t be back. Like newzjunkies, I listen to, three networks, and read three papers plus cable and internet news. As a gym rat, I love participant sports and never crack the Sports Pages for spectator stories. Same for Cooking, Automobile, and Real Estate: They’ve never been my cup of tea.

News is titillating but not happy

Corona 19 has made a change. The news is entertainment, shocking, titillating, but rarely enlightening. Civilization could be coming to an end, and we’d never know because there was no video clip or footage. For a story to become news, there must be camera shots of blood or gorgeous young people. No film means no entertainment value, and the story is unworthy of prime time.
Not to say Trump, the virus, and racial issue news are not momentous, but constructive solutions, remedies, or even thought-provoking treatment gets no coverage. Maybe it does, but for me, it’s depressing and does nothing for my health. It’s not worth compulsive following.

Take away the front page and Metro, what’s left? Vegan-burger?

Keeping up with the late-breaking stories once made me feel like I knew what’s going on. It seemed admirable, socially conscious, even patriotic. With the virus lock-down, I’ve now begun to stray from the News to Sports and other pages. I delight in reading that our 6 Super-bowl rings carrying Tom Brady, a hero who can drop into the White House for a chat, score a million points a game, a man who can walk on water, was unable to walk on grass or do push ups in a Tampa public park. When a living god is evicted from a public park by a maintenance grunt, that is news. As a gym rat myself, it makes me chuckle.
The Food Section called for me to replace my “Steak au poivre” with a Vegan Cheeseburger. I don’t eat Steak au poivre or even read about it in the Editorial, Metro, or Business section. I never got the fun, healthy stuff like that. The vaccine will come, and the virus will go, but I don’t want to go back to the depressing, unwholesome late breaking news.