A critique

I'm a fan of Yahoo! News, let me say that right off the bat. I don't quite like it as much for actual news as Google's service, but they have an impressive selection of opinion columns, plus, the 'most popular' box constantly reaffirms my faith that Americans as a general populace are frightening indeed. I quote: "Troops relaxing with musical pillow." "Ashton Kutcher producing sitcom pilot." *sigh*

Regardless, though, I just today realized something interesting about Yahoo's main news page. Ever since they revamped it some time ago, you access the different categories via tabs at the top of the page: U.S., Business, World, Entertainment, Sports, Tech, Politics, Science, Health, Most Popular.

For the most part, I understand the way they're divided up - that's the general nation-wide standard. But...wait a second, now. National news - got it. Business, followed by World: I personally think that, since the tabs seem to be in some sort of order and not random, that 'World' should come first, but the stock market is pretty important. US, Business, World...uh, entertainment? Sports? Then politics?

Why is politics even it's own category? A quick skimming reveals that it is entirely US politics: there may be a few dabbles into international policy issues, but it's all the Supreme Court and American congress.

Regretfully Yahoo! has yet to ask my opinion on their layout, but I personally think that this is just one of the symptoms of the overwhelming problem of Americans being willfully ignorant. Sure, give us AP articles about an interesting murder case in New York, or the latest "Holy you mean the get hurricanes in Florida! Poor retired folks!" story. But don't ask us to read about the real issues. Don't ask me to care about Harriet Mier's true stance on issues, or about our plan in Iraq, or even for that matter the fighting that is still going on in Afghanistan - we're not just screwing up Iraq. And forget about even thinking anything but the government-sponsored propeganda about how things are going across the mideast: as a Patriotic American, I refuse to listen to that.

Oh, and by the way: that freedom we're fighting for on behalf of the Iraqi people - you know, defending their rights in a way that looks suspiciously like a bunch of hooligans slaughtering innocent civilians in a foreign country, at our government's request? About those rights like freedom of speech - they don't so much apply to our own soldiers.