Skip to content

My Moral Outrage Button Is Broken (Semi-Rant)

I have no idea why I’m so busy posting today. I feel like I’ve been on semi auto-pilot for a while now. It’s likely due to the fact that I’ve been battling some sort of fatigue/illness/alien invasion that we can’t quite pinpoint yet., but I have a feeling it’s also due to the fact that my brain is just…tired.

There have been so many things going on in the world recently. Amazing, terrifying, world changing, intellectually frustrating things. From countries fighting for independence to Republicans literally trying to make miscarriages a crime. I mean, every day there’s some major things happening that makes me react and, as the days go on, I can’t tell any more just how much my reacting is actually going to do or what good it will cause.

During the presidential press conference today, a reporter asked the president about Libya and the NFL lockout in the same question.

The NFL lockout? Wait, you want to ask a question about a union fighting for rights and, instead of asking if the president is going to intervene in Wisconsin, you ask about the NFL? Now, I’m not saying the NFL isn’t important and they have reasons for their disputes with management, but how in the heck do the financial lives of people who make millions of dollars trump the financial lives of people in the public sector who have been protesting to keep their collective bargaining rights?

Oh right, because the NFL is American and the story isn’t 15 days old. Still, 15 days of a protest should be more newsworthy, right? Or is my moral outrage meter off? Should I worry more about the NFL than the women in South Dakota? Or should I give more attention to the shooting in Germany? Or..

I’m having a hard time trying to wrap my head around the fact that the things I’m upset about. Things like women’s reproductive rights and the fact that more and more people think Obama was born in Kenya, or that NASA gets grief for the small amount of funding it receives or that WIC should get cut over branding on a NASCAR racer’s bumper…

I just…my moral outrage button is worn out.

So I’m posting pics and videos and hoping that, in the end, somewhere I’ll get my energy back and be able to get it working again.

Until then, will you guys try and be outraged for me?

Tweet

4 Comments

  1. Hi,
    I am an evil advertiser (also a geeky girl myself). Sorry to bother you!
    I just wanted to ask if you are interested in google science fair(it’s a pretty cool, relevant campaign)? If you are, drop me a line. I can see you don’t have advertising on your site but you are raising money. Maybe this might help. :)
    Cheers,
    Tatiana

  2. Don’t worry, I’ll be outraged enough for the both of us.

    And re: miscarriages. The most infuriating thing is that Republicans fight tooth and nail against regulations that would protect pregnant women from things that CAUSE miscarriages, like food-borne pathogens from filthy slaughterhouses and pesticides that contaminate virtually everything we consume. They shriek about whiny liberals who want ‘Big Government’ to babysit everybody, yet they see nothing intrusive about letting the government stick its nose in a woman’s uterus?

    Grrrrrrrrr. >:/

  3. From the time of the Romans, and probably earlier, sports have been a way of distracting the people from real issues. They have also had a lot of money involved, due to the volume of public interest. In that light, I don’t find the reporter asking such a question very surprising, though you are not at all wrong to say that sports detract from issues of weighty moral import.

    Sports are designed to take attention from those issues.

Leave a Reply to tatiana.crisan Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.