Less than 24 hours after another mass murder at an American high school that left ten dead, the headline at CNN.com proclaimed, “Here comes the bride.” I can watch videos of the Beckhams, the Clooneys, and even Oprah arriving at the festivities, not to mention a live feed of Meghan Markle herself (wow!) on the way to the chapel. Finally, there is some good news to celebrate, even if it isn’t happening here.
What America needs is a royal family of its own to serve up some high quality regal distractions. But alas, we’re stuck with more news of mass murder beyond our capacity to synthesize. And when the story disappears from the news cycle, it’s back to non-stop Trump.
Two thirds of Americans have gone numb, are in total denial, not paying attention, still suffering from presidential election PTSD, or addicted to opioids. The remaining third have somehow come to the conclusion that the country is “on the right track.”
By the way, since I started writing this, the CNN headline has changed to, ”The Big Moment.” It is indeed! Two people most of us either have never heard of until a few days ago, or just don’t care about, are exchanging wedding vows. Also, CNN has just posted footage of Meghan “walking herself down the aisle.” Note to CNN: She’s not “walking herself,” she's just walking.” And while I have not seen it yet, I’ll bet that she looks smashing!
A much smaller CNN headline reads “Muqtada al-Sadr coalition wins Iraq election.” Is that a good thing? Sorry, I’m not up on this story. I don’t know about anything happening in the world that isn’t related to Trump, except of course that Meghan and what’s-his-name will now be known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Pretty damn impressive! By the way, in case you didn’t know or forgot, Muqtada al-Sadr is an anti-American populist, so no, the victory of his political coalition is not a good thing, though I will admit that if I lived in Iraq, I might be an anti-American populist myself. A lot of us would.
Hey, CNN now reports that the happy couple was just married! Yippie! I know that Trump wasn’t invited, though I wonder if Robert Mueller was. He's so busy with his investigation, he probably couldn’t have made it anyway. In any case, I am certainly grateful that CNN is not bothering me with cliched obituaries of the murdered students and encouraging me instead to focus my attention on the "newly revealed details of the wedding venue, cake and reception."
Oh, and here’s another really compelling and important headline that is breaking just now on CNN: “The most extraordinary hats at the royal wedding.”
As I write this, the morning following the school shooting at Santa Fe High School, the headline story at the websites for Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, Slate, Google News, Yahoo News, the Huffington Post and USA Today all joyously shout about the exceedingly exquisite royal wedding. Finally, we have found a solution, not to gun violence, but to those pesky feelings of upset and sorrow that typically follow a mass shooting.
I would write more but I have to stop now to look at footage of the happy couple’s first kiss.