Flying Under the Radar...

Every once in a while, I begin to wonder about all the people and places that never get mentioned on the evening news, which takes on an even more surreal irony when we consider how few people still obtain their daily dose of headlines from the traditional television outlets. Whether it's the nightly new summaries or the morning shows, I can't help but notice a vast reservoir of missing stories, vast regions and populations that the anchors have nothing to tell us about. How can that be so? You'd think that after five minutes of national politics, five minutes of random international news and the latest round-up of celebrity gossip and that much-anticipated, hourly health tip, there would be time for something more - not just a cloying, glib, feel-good puff piece to balance out the tabloid fodder. You'd think. But hey - the formula brings in ratings and the formula's only been like that for the past 40 years or so. And besides, oh most loyal drone-like traditional news junkie, do you ever remember anything "big" or "officially noteworthy" ever happening - aside from unforeseen weather events - in states like South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Delaware, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Kentucky, West Texas, Mississippi, Maine, Vermont, Idaho, Ohio, Oregon, Nevada or Kansas? Having lived in certain remote locales myself, I know the feeling of being overlooked or at best, referred to "in passing" and it occurs to me that this neglect is a major factor in the polarization that is currently crippling our politics... Because believe me, people in the "fly-over states" feel it - that sense of being overlooked, marginalized, forgotten, ignored, ridiculed, condescended to... Sure, the news is great at covering a hard-times economy in various places (when plants close down, when towns go bust), but there are many other pieces to the puzzle that go under-reported: i.e. outsourcing, shifts in demographics and employment, job training or lack thereof, the state of our schools, health care, hospitals, outpatient care, medicine and the elderly, mental health, prisons, youth crime, the justice system, the ongoing housing crisis, the silent traumas faced by military families,  marriage and courtship, divorce, child-rearing, daycare, today's teenagers, science, the arts, guns, religion, nutrition, the state of Main Street U.S.A....