Coming out curmudgeon

I can’t tell you when it happened, or how it happened for that matter, but it seems I hate everything. Like a cancer, I think it started small, buried somewhere in my brain, growing slowly but inexorably. Being home during the day a lot more has not helped matters. The fact that Jerry Springer is still on the air (and has spawned a spin-off featuring his bald-headed security chief intimidating scrawny dead-beat dads) and that there are something like 10 TV judges dispensing justice – one who does it on the sidewalk – has made it easy for me to hate daytime television. (And while we’re on that subject, someone should tell Ellen that she can’t dance!)

But I can’t blame TV alone. After all, there is an “off” button. There’s plenty of real-life stuff to grind my teeth over. Pigs at the trough politicians, the life-blood of my business, really make me wanna wretch, or worse, punch somebody in the face. It’s not even fun any more. After nearly 20 years of this, I get no more joy from calling someone like that a pig, or remarking how stupid they can be to sell their credibility for the price of a big screen TV. Instead, I think about how stupid it makes the rest of us look for electing, and reelecting, these trolls.

Had I returned to full-time work by now, some of these things would probably not be bothering me as much. Perhaps. But when the U.S. Dept. of Labor announces that half a million people filing unemployment claims last week is a great sign of our national economic recovery, it just makes me realize how bad things really are, and how far we have to go before we can get back to even the good ‘ol G. W. Bush days.

I know this comes as no surprise to those of you who’ve been out there looking for work, but there ain’t no jobs to be had. Salaries are way down, especially in the media biz, and companies that do hire don’t want to pay for even basic health insurance. Our Congress is thisclose to passing a health care reform law that will supposedly help us by slowing the growth of health care costs. (From $800 million to $400 million pover the next decade) Are you telling me that after a year of political posturing and public rancor, this is what we’re going to end up with? (Don’t answer that.)

I haven’t posted anything here in a week. (I know. You really missed me.) There’s been the obvious post-election depression, and it’s otherwise been a slow week for news, but, more significantly, I’m not sure I have had anything to say over the last nine days. Looking through some of my old newspaper clips, I came across my stories on corruption scandals in West New York, Union City, Hoboken and Jersey City. Amazingly, almost 20 years later, the stories are pretty much the same. Scum bag takes cash in exchange for influence.

The only difference is that the hair growing out of my ears nowadays is gray. It’s time I faced the facts. I am what my friends have been saying lately, some with great concern.

A curmudgeon.