by Will Van Gleder ’16

While the world goes crazy, newscasters continue to enjoy talking about nonsense. Terrorists took over a BP oil facility in Algeria and chaos ensued; people there were injured and killed. The president of the United States was about to be inaugurated for a second term. What was the headline story on NBC news? A foot-long sandwich at Subway was measured at only eleven inches! Another big story they couldn’t stop talking about on the news was the tale of the Notre Dame athlete Manti Te-o who may have fabricated a non-existent dead girlfriend in a desperate attempt to garner sympathy to win the Heisman trophy. Why do Americans care so much about irrelevant silliness and not about real news? Is it possible that people find soft, fluffy news interesting? We need to take important news more seriously. The earth is warming up, massacre continues to occur in American schools, wars rage on, American children continue to get increasingly obese and we want to hear about sandwiches and college football stars.