One less radio commentary for me to depend upon:

Note: sorry if the grammar here and there sounds a bit more choppy than usual but I am going off of raw emotion and a can of wild cherry Pepsi.

I have been paying more attention to blogs more and more right around last summer when I was at my internship North Carolina because where I was working at for the summer; it just was not that popping at all. So for me to waste away the days and weekends, I started surfing the internet more than usual. As I did so, I had to find different ways at work to deal with the bit of the repetitive programming and planning I was engaged with day in and day out on the computer. One of the ways I began to deal with this was starting to listen to NPR more than usual, particularly this one program called News & Notes. News & Notes is a sub program on the big NPR scale that dealt with issues and perspectives from the black perspective. Issues they discussed since I have been listening to the show ranged in all kinds of issues from sports, entertainment, military, politics, musicians (the ones that you wouldn’t hear a lot on mainstream radio), health, etc. I found the show very informative and very soothing, particularly since I started in graduate school. Of course for as long as I remember, I have taken advantage of always listening to NPR because it was public radio and it was something different to listen to other than the usual so called network news. Well I said all that to say that News and Notes broadcasted its last show on Friday. I didn’t listen to News & Notes a lot this week because I was just busy all week. Today, as I work on this assignment I have been pretty much catching up with all the past shows up until its last week. When I first read on the NPR site that they were getting rid of the show due to budget constraints, all I could think of was “No surprise to get rid of certain kind of shows when there is always some kind of budget constraints”. The fact that there is no such program on broadcast radio available that offers different and cultural viewpoints than the status quo is quite disturbing in itself. And for those people who are using the line of the need of such programs because we live in a “post-racial era” needs to get real and take the sunshine glasses off their eyes and realize the kind of world that we live in. Just because of November 4, 2008 occurred did not mean that racism and prejudice was killed off in all of its forms, both subtle and glaringly as a lot of people would like to believe. If you believe that we do live in a "post-racial era", then I have beachfront property to sell you in Oklahoma. I mentioned in a previous post of how sad the state of listening to the news is becoming day in and day out. When you watch these so called network news channels you can’t tell anymore what is real news, people’s opinions, and generalizations based upon the commentary of everyone and their mama who is a blogger and somehow a self-proclaimed expert in all affairs that are news and political worthy. And I just heard the other day of more and more newspapers across American cities shutting down their printing presses because of their abysmal sales. Some are either shutting down their printing presses forever, are being forced to pimp themselves out to larger conglomerates, or forced to enter onto an online media of “printing and publishing” news which in my opinion is a horrible substitute of actual printed newspapers. I don’t when people begin to think that it was a bad idea to pay 50 cents to pick up a newspaper and read (and I mean READ) what was going on in their neighborhood, city, state, national and international fronts. Are citizens becoming such drones that they are turning over their mind to everyone else who sometimes does not have their best interests at heart? Such entities that are only concerned about getting all the dollars they can by spreading their non-stop bombardment of subliminal messages? Why-because as the O’Jays sing it, everything is done for the love of money. So don’t be surprised that as one’s soul is being sold down the river, question the way of life one is accustomed to going down the toilet. Choices one makes for not being informed and unwillingness in going to multiple sources to verify the so called “news” being fed day in and day out. Note: This is why I am checking out as of today watching any kind of news. I will tune in next week to only be recapped on what was mentioned the week I tuned out for. Go figure…