Not a magazine, not the sports page...

Do we read? No, really. Do we read? Do we stay up on current events? I hope that my supposition on this question is woefully wrong, but I don't think that it is. Please prove me wrong. Black people, please prove me wrong. I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not encouraged at this point. To say that the information at our disposal is abundant is to grossly understate the facts. For those that cannot tear themselves away from the television, there's the run of the mill news channels and their corresponding websites. Of course, I'm talking about CNN, Fox News, Headline News, BBC and so on, and so on. These all have their own style of delivery, varying from the sensational to the downright slanted in a particular direction. You almost have to sneak a peak at all of them to get the so-called facts of any particular story. But then again, the anchor's need to be bigger than the story can often eclipse the meat of the news at issue.

There has always been something about the written word that has fascinated me, and it has always seemed to be more genuine than things that I might have heard someone speak in conversation or reported on television. When I was a kid, the encyclopedia was king. If it said so in there, then it was so. At the time, it never occurred to me that my 1979 World Book Encyclopedias were only useful for events that had occurred up to that point, and would become more and more obsolete with each passing day. In primary and secondary education we were fed text books and various period novels that spoke from a historical perspective but were never encouraged to question what we were reading. It was fact. The book said it. I believed it. That settled it. Luckily, I was led to pick up a Things Fall Apart and an Autobiography of Malcolm X to add some spice and different perspective to the very suburban catholic private school education that I received. This at least primed me for the multitude of new thoughts and, perhaps more importantly, schools of thought that I would be exposed to in the years after high school. I've always loved the exchanges that are born out of the hot topics affecting society and the different angles from which each of the exchange's contributors came.

Unfortunately, most of us don't spend alot of time in the Student Union, or by "The Bear" chopping it up or exchanging ideologies anymore. We go to work, and go home and try to figure out how to pay our bills when they come up. We catch our news in sound bites or on text scrolls at the bottom of the screen as we get our cardio workout done at the gym. We don't have time. We don't MAKE time to question any of the information, never mind actually verifying any of it. It would be an incredible travesty for our generation, stewards of the Information Age, not to take advantage of the wealth of material at our disposal. I have a hard time believing that the 18-35 set (which I'm clinging to for the moment) of 40 years ago would not have been infinitely more effective in their protests and Civil Rights Movements armed with the vast resources that most of us possess today. Yet, we sit idly by and check our Myspace, being much more in the know about who's going to get the shot at love with Tila Tequila than who's going to get the nod from the Democratic party in the next election.

I'm not trying to take a moral high ground here and point the finger at everybody else about not being informed enough, because I am by no means as informed as I'd like to be. At times, my life seems to be a sprint from one activity to another, with meals taken on the run and sleep often caught up on at inopportune times. That's actually one of the things I like about traveling. Not only do I get to interact with people from far away places and hear their take on things, but I also get to catch up on reading while I fly. I'm also fortunate to have a mother that incessantly clips newspaper articles for me to read and calls and emails me to "watch this on PBS" or "read last Sunday's Boondocks" or "listen to this guy on Fresh Air at 4pm". One such article shed an interesting light on some of the things that I've long suspected about Ronald Reagan. In his opinion piece on November 14, 2007, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert strongly suggested that Reagan's campaign trail stop in Neshoba County, Mississippi was not nearly as random as Reagan supporters would have you believe. "I believe in states' rights!" is what Reagan told them that day, implying that when it comes to issues of "you and the blacks, we're with you" [the good white folks of Neshoba County]. Recall that this is also the same guy that opposed Dr. King's Holiday, tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and opposed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Another article talked about Senator McCain's gaffe during the YouTube/CNN debates (something about downplaying significance of the internet and information technology) and how big an issue the Internet has become for the candidates this time around. Ignorance on these issues could prove to be quite costly for not only the candidates (who might not get a ticket to the big dance next November) but also for us as constituents left to live with their antiquated ideas.

There is hope though. One of my friends that I least expected got on the topic of Benazir Bhutto recently, and we had a short conversation. A few more of these and we might have ourselves a bonafide revolution. What kind of revolution is unknown. Perhaps a fact gathering revolution, or even a stay in the know revolution. So please, stay hungry for knowledge and leave no stone unturned in your search for the truth. You never can have too much information.