Then again, Mr. Stone; or, Calling Dorothy Day

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a sort of homage to Izzy Stone, and argued in Stonian (Stone-like? Stony?) fashion for the importance of reading between the lines of the mainstream news. Stone was right about this, I think, and importantly so, especially during the doldrums of campaign season. But following his lead in this means reading the mainstream news, or listening to it, or whatever; and that means subjecting oneself to a great deal of foolishness. Wading through all of that in search of real news is an exercise in what is, in a slightly different context,  called tedium management. Everyone has a foolishness/doldrums/tedium threshold. I think I've reached mine.

Here are the things I'm supposed to care about right now, if I follow the lead of what one writer calls 'the Versailles media':

1. The latest polls on the portion of the presidential race involving Goldman Sachs' best bud and Goldman Sachs' former best bud. (People tied to Goldman Sachs gave over $1M to Mr. Obama in 2008, more than any other US corporation, but have publicly broken up with him this year and pledged their troth to Mr. Romney, to the tune of $900k so far. Obama's gotten $130k.)
2. Various attempts to read the tea leaves to determine the prospects for messrs Obama and Romney. In the past week alone, four of my 'today's headlines' emails from the Paper of Record have started with non-news 'news' about campaign intangibles - about Romney 'resetting' his efforts in Ohio 'with renewed vigor,' and about how the titanic struggle between these two, um, titans is now 'gaining in intensity,' and so on.
3. The panic in and around the Obama camp over said polls and tea leaf reading. Apparently Andrew Sullivan has been up in arms here, but I don't read Sullivan (for reasons I may come to in a later post) so I couldn't say. The so-called debates (hereafter referred to as 'debates*') feature prominently here. 
4. "If it bleeds it leads' stories, involving miscellaneous bank robberies, fires, missing children, and so on.
5. Assorted obvious nonsense, often given the second segment on the morning shows right after a smattering of real news. Examples include feuding divas on reality TV competitions and, um, more stuff like that that I can't even remember. 

Here are some things I actually care about: 

1. The way the two candidates from Goldman Sachs and their backers continue their shared effort, abetted by the Paper of Record and the rest, to monopolize the space for widespread public deliberation about the merits and identity of our overlords - er, leaders. Or, more concretely: After the craptastic display of the first presidential debate*, how can anyone not want to see how Romney and Obama (and our hapless moderator) would fare against the Green, Libertarian, and Justice Party candidates? Anyone, that is, not invested in the Commission on Presidential Debates(*) and the continued duopoly of the dems and republicans.
2. The apparently inevitable reckoning for austerity politics in the Eurozone, as staying the course simultaneously immiserates and emboldens the people of Greece and Spain.
3. The ongoing capitulation to austerity politics in the US. Pick your example: the great state of Chris Christie doing an end run around public safety and its police unions and abolishing Camden's police force; the Arne Duncaning of US schooling; etc., etc. 
4. The way corporate assailants of our environment seem somehow unable to shake the trust of many citizens, no matter how hard they try. I watched a resident of Marcellus Shale country - in a video I can't find now, sadly - explain why he wasn't worried about the hazards of fracking. He said, and I quote as nearly as I can recall, "If it was dangerous, the [drilling] company wouldn't do it. They wouldn't do anything like that." I don't even know what to say to that. And this guy looked old enough to remember the good old, gilded-age, I-hope-the-meat-I-just-bought-isn't-tainted days before, say, the FDA. In related news, consider the occasional stories, invariably related with an air of great surprise, about the latest oil-related problem someone has discovered in the Gulf region. Because, you know, the gubbment and BP sopped up all that oil years ago and that was the end of it.
5. Our near-total refusal to punish the people who wrecked the global economy, or to restore/create the safeguards that will make the next crash less likely. (Oh yeah: Goldman Sachs.)

The total absence of the things I care about from the public spaces where The Things We Care About are supposed to appear is, in its way, even more distressing than the things themselves. So consider this a long corollary to the Izzy Stone rule: pay attention to the news* (I'm digging these asterisks), but make sure you protect your soul against the tedium. I'll call this the Dorothy Day corollary, after the great Catholic activist. And I'll take it as one reason for the prominence of parody and art in radical activism, and as one justification for things like this (from this site, though recently taken down):