News aggregator apps can convey a twisted worldview at times, a skewed appearance of priorities. Then again what do I know. Maybe a boat capsizing in Lake Tahoe and someone getting laid off from Microsoft really are more important than overnight bunker-busting in Iran. That is how the headlines landed on a certain news app I use. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t know what’s happening over there, or over here for that matter. In the old days most of us had a single source, or two. A single newspaper and a single television newscas. Today every possible angle on a situation is blasted at you, with lies and disinformation far more desperate for engagement than the truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Does Iran really have sleeper cells in the U.S.? Will they come after us at random? They got at Rushdie proving the threat, at least, is certainly real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the first Gulf War commenced I was living at the Parc Lincoln, the first extended-stay place I had in New York. I heard about it on the radio. Lacking a television I went outside, onto Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, expecting some sort of activity or communal sense of concern or engagement with the fact that our soldiers were going into harms way.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found no such atmosphere. I guess no one even knew at that point, as word did not travel at the hyperventilated speeds we’ve come to expect. On 9\/11 I had a similar expectation, that a deliberate attack such as occurred would cause maelstroms in Manhattan. I found none on 34th Street but of course there was plenty happening downtown. Colossal incidents tend to happen in a what amounts to a small square of space, or in the case of 9\/11, two squares of space. Or three.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was one time I really felt all of New York around me come together was during the O.J. Simpson slow-speed Bronco chase. I was on a bus and every which way I looked it seemed there was a television turned on and tuned to O.J. Outside restaurants and random places with televisions in the windows small crowds had gathered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was on a crosstown bus, probably the M79. When it emerged from Central Park and moved on toward Madison Avenue there seemed to be televisions everywhere, seen through apartment windows, in open-door restaurants and cafes. It was likely not as everywhere<\/em> as memory serves it up but the coagulation of strangers around this rather surreal slo-mo “chase” was definitely real.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News aggregator apps can convey a twisted worldview at times, a skewed appearance of priorities. Then again what do I know. Maybe a boat capsizing in Lake Tahoe and someone getting laid off from Microsoft really are more important than overnight bunker-busting in Iran. That is how the headlines landed on a certain news app […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-cgE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}