I am of the old school when the news was the news. Radio, TV, and newspapers told me what’s going on: Who. What. When. Where. And occasionally why. Any good journalism class taught students what constitutes a news story. “Why” was in the article only if it was impossible to understand the rest without a few words of explanation. Gone are the days. Now, I will give this to newspapers: if there are any true journalists left in the world, they’re writing for print. But radio and TV? It is all entertainment and opinion, disguised as news. I don’t care if you watch Fox News or MSNBC (or any of the cable channels inbetween), all are about selling commercials to sponsors and the way you do that is by being entertaining. Trashing the opposing political point of view is done with great outrage and funny lines. And that, in the United States of America in 2010, is entertaining. And it’s what passes for news these days. I haven’t even mentioned blogs. Including this one. Bloggers are in it, too, and you get to the top of the heap in the blogosphere by being just as opinionated as the cable news channels.

If you have any doubt about how you feel, you can count on all of ‘em – radio, newspapers, TV, and blogs, to tell you about the latest survey. Not a day goes by but The American People speak by talking to one poll-taker or another and their views are presented to us as What We Believe, and if you don’t share those ideas then you are clearly off the mark. Sometimes we even learn how many good citizens were queried about their beliefs: a few hundred, a few thousand. But I have never been asked, and I’m tired of being told what the selected folks believe, again disguised as reliable information.

I have just resumed blogging after a little hiatus as I reorganized my life and my closets for fall. But between now and the election, my goal is to blog more often, and to sort out What I Believe. I’ll draw information from all of the folks who I have trashed above (isn’t that the way these days?) And because this is the great new day of non-journalism, I’ll be right up front about the whole thing. This is not news. It is opinion. Come along for the ride!