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Letters from 19 to 25 October 2009

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters are the opinions of the writers and not Anglicans Online. We publish letters that we think will be of interest to our readers, whether we agree with them or not. If you'd like to write a letter of your own, click here.

Easy to watch?

Dear Friends who struggle to keep me accountable,

Thank you for your gentle yet authoritative kick-in-the-pants article this week. On more than one occassion I've fallen victim to today's sensationalistic media strategies and chosen to click the link to the world's most recent dancing baby video instead of the one linking my brain cells to something more meaningful. Free entertainment abounds in today's media and human-interest stories often serve as that one last swig I need to survive the doldrums of office work. However, the aforementioned situation bodes no honorable excuse for my behavior.

I've wasted so much time watching and re-watching sneezing pandas, Charlie grinningly nibbling on his big brother's finger, and this adorable little boy struggles to say the word "blood" that I've become the change I don't want to see in the world. I have always detested the physical process of reading a newspaper since I'm a little OCD and don't like their smell, walking away with black-inked fingers, or my inability to re-fold the medium back into its nice little packaged form. Once again, of course, I have failed to deliver a valiant excuse for my apathy.

News matters but I've allowed my fingertips to commit grave sins by fueling this gimme-gimme consumer demand for vapid laughs and Schadenfreude moments. Maybe news stations should dip into the pool of unemployed performers and songwriters and present the day's stories with a little jig and jive. Because my addiction, no, our addiction, runs deep and I don't know what else would work.

Sarah Catherine
St. John's Episcopal Church, Lancaster, PA
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA
sarahthetree@yahoo.com
24 October 2009

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.