During the day I don’t get a lot of time to keep up with the news. My sole source for tales from the outside world is a television in a glass-walled conference room — I pass the room frequently, and as I pass I’m able to catch a momentary glimpse of either CNN or MSNBC.

You would think, from the headlines displayed on those stations, that the only event of note in the past week was the arrest of a man who may have murdered a little girl ten years ago (but is more likely just a kook, if the forensics mean anything at all). I don’t mean to make light of the suffering of a child, but I think most reasonable people would agree that this story wasn’t even national news back when it was new.

Catching the headlines on CNN, you wouldn’t even realize there’s a war on in Lebanon, that the UN has ‘forced’ a ceasefire, and that a crapload of French troops are being sent in to ~act as human shields~ keep the peace ~while Hezbollah reloads~ while the situation cools down.

Catching the headlines on CNN, you wouldn’t even know that the news of this war coming out of Beirut is based at least in part on doctored photographs. Nor would you know that many of the images and videos showing ‘victims of the attacks’ are in fact staged by Hezbollah sympathizers who carry corpses around and artfully arrange them to produce the most ‘convincing’ imagery possible.

Catching the headlines on CNN, you wouldn’t even know that the Democratic party has become so mindless and morally bankrupt that one of the few liberals who isn’t actively working to destroy America is forced to run as an independent.

You probably would know that the NSA wiretapping program has been ruled unconstitutional (after all, it’s a defeat for Bush, right?), but you might not have heard that more than one person agrees the opinion is full of shit.

So I’m glad we’ve got the Internet thing, ‘cause without it who knows what we’d know.