The Morning News - Reading With the Enemy

The Morning News - Reading With the Enemy

ME: What if I only listened to the Eagles for a month?

ME: Horrible, but not enough.

ME: What if I only read Russian novels? Or chick lit?

ME: Yes, but reading only happens at bedtime – too easy.

ME: What if I only rode local buses everywhere?

ME: OK, now you’re just reaching.

My ideas were too superficial, too banal. Spurlock’s near-renal failure haunted my brainstorming process. A month of Don Henley is painful but no match for thirty days of Filet-O-Fish.

Then my girlfriend had an idea. An idea that required a real struggle, a complete lifestyle change, with the potential to ruin personal relationships, trash my psyche, turn my whole world not just upside down, but inside out and backward. In other words, a really great bad idea.

HER: What if you spent one month reading, listening to, and watching only right-wing media. No New York Times, no NPR, no network news, no CNN, no lefty blogs, no liberal novels. Nothing left-wing or centrist, and nothing ‘objective.’ Nothing that makes up the world you currently inhabit.

ME: Babe, you’re an evil genius, and I love you

D.C. Dispatch | 2004.04.28 | Powers

D.C. Dispatch | 2004.04.28 | Powers: "If you want to drive the political media crazy these days, mention God. They'll immediately start acting strangely, running for the exits."