Change the channel

I seem to remember a time when every night of the week yielded a prime-time show I deemed worth watching. Nowadays a combination of being less entranced with the boob tube, the cancellation or "natural" end of all the good shows, and the (convenient) shuffle of all my favorites to the same days of the week (Law & Order: SVU and House are both on Tuesdays) have cut down on my brain melting (besides, The O.C. isn't on this summer).

When I do turn on the TV, though, I confess I do a bit of channel Jujitsu (not to be confused with Jungle Kung Fu): I slide onto the couch after the evening news and pick my favorite show or channel, confining myself to NBC and CBS when FOX is doing the local news. Then as the other two networks start in on the news, I either retire or go back to FOX for some Cheers. So yes, I do take pains to avoid watching the news, but I have an excuse: I read the New York Times.

Until the end of the week, I'm the Peace Minister at my home church. I'm admittedly not very good at it, but one thing I have managed to do is talk to a few youth groups and a camp about everything from conscientious objection to current events. I've been getting a sinking feeling that nobody knows what's going on in the world all summer; my worst fears were realized when, in the midst of an all-out Israeli invasion of Lebanon (which, I confirmed tonight, does indeed make the airwaves), a three-member youth group was able to name only Iraq and "somewhere in Ireland" as conflict zones.

And then I have friends, my age, who out and say they don't care. This is the problem in America. It's not the gays, it's not our warmongering (okay, that's a problem too), it's not obesity (see above). It's that Americans are simply out of touch with everything that's happening in the world. Maybe that's why the terrorists hate us. They don't hate our freedom, they hate our unbelievable ignorance and apathy towards the unimaginable suffering that's going on all around us. We're all part of this world. I'm not asking you to go save children in Africa; if everyone did that, nobody could have sold me the speaker system I bought today. But the least you can do is pick up a newspaper and at least know things are happening, if not all the gritty details. Here's an idea: Every day, go to the New York Times website (www.nytimes.com) and read just their headline news. Maybe even just the first article on the page. But for God's sake, don't sit in a cave with your fingers in your ears.