Writing late at night is the best feeling ever. Emerging from a drug induced stupor, you grasp at those last vestiges of inspiration, compelling you to quickly enunciate your thoughts on the flickering screen of your computer. My inspiration comes from a variety of sources; the magazine I was reading, Pat Methany playing in the background; the usual hubbub that happens in my house on a rainy Sunday evening.

What sparked me to electronically scribble down these thoughts was my somewhat hazy recollection of a TV5 (French channel) News broadcast. Perhaps I had stumbled across the “International” section of the show (my French comprehension is, admittedly, shaky), but for the full 10 minutes that I watched, both stories tackled international issues. AIDS and disease in Africa and the recent explosion in North Korea. Presenting the facts of the story, some analysis and some shocking footage (emaciated children and a town leveled are pretty intense images), the French program did justice to the notion that things out there are damn right scary.

It’s fitting then when I switch on CNN earlier today, that I witness a completely different approach to news. Now I was greeted with tales of human courage, of the Michael Jackson trial, of the latest on the Atkins Diet. People often have an image of an ignorant American population, unaware of world events. A sample of this “leading” news network clearly lends credence to that claim.

But I’m not saying that American airwaves are filled with shlock. OK, let me rephrase that: What little space set aside for quality programming produces an excellent array of information and entertainment. If I wanted to watch a documentary on the life of some ancient Egyptian high priest, I could.

Eventually what you have is choice (and a wide range for that matter). We are free to select either a mind-numbing piece of garbage or an intellectually stimulating broadcast. When watching the dregs of TV-shows, a sense of guilty pleasure washes over us, as we are both intrigued and revolted by whatever is enacted on our boob-tubes. When the latest live telecast of the 9/11 Commission is on every news channel, we are gripped with an intense desire to seek out the truth.

Who knows what the next generation of television programming bring us? Our children? Our children’s children?