Two weeks ago I was standing with a group of strangers, sipping a Mojito, watching President Obama's inauguration speech and thinking, 'Yes. We. Can.' along with everybody else. Last week, I was desperately researching everything I didn't already know about the conflict in Gaza, resolutely not picking a side. This week I'm preoccupied with our politics at home, and who I'm going to vote for when the election rolls around. Last year I was anti-China, and wondering about volunteer work in Tibet. Two years ago I was pondering the plight of innocent Afghan refugees in Pakistan, four years ago the displaced Aborigines, and when I was little I remember sending my pocket money for the month to National Geographic, convinced it would help to save panda bears from extinction.
My point is that current affairs are just that - current. The stories that every news channel bombards us with one week, are eclipsed by something else the next. Consequently, our sympathies are constantly changing, even though the situations that tugged our heartstrings in the first place aren't. Tibet is still under China's thumb, Palestine and Israel will continue to launch rockets at one another in their ongoing and senseless destruction of one another, and though the panda extinction situation is very slightly less dire, I doubt it has anything to do with my ten bucks.
No real point to this post, apart from musing on the fickle nature of the human race and that slippery fish we call The Media.
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