TODAY’S QURAN VERSE

Sufficient is your Lord as a guide and helper. Quran 25:31

Nightly news rages on

Kudos to Peter Rosenberger’s column “Outrage: Our new political pastime” (Sept. 12) for his witty, insightful look at the frenetic state of our elite media lately. He decried “the ragefueled tweeters, commentators and marchers who are wearing genitalia on their heads” and “the voices (on TV mostly) berating us about what we should rage at today.”

The news media are crucial elements of our world, they have been compared to the nervous system in advanced technological societies, but these meltdowns seem to show a system in manic Strangelovian mode. While the Tim Russerts and Charles Krauthammers are gone — as Rosenberger lamented — and the plucky Holly Williams soldiers on for CBS in Middle Eastern danger spots, the major networks conjure up (in Rosenberger’s

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Email letters to letters@commercial appeal.com; mail Letters to the Editor, The Commercial Appeal, 495 Union, Memphis, TN 38103; or click on the “Submit Letter” link on the Opinion page atcommercialappeal.com. analogy) a shrill version of the Brady Bunch squares “with fuming pundits shouting over each other.”

My wife and I moved from California to Memphis in November, travelling seven states and 1,700 miles, and found the heartland (warts and all) in much better shape than we see reflected on the nightly news. Prescriptions abound but media folk visiting flyover country more often might help. I suspect most Americans see through this enervating trend. Good for Rosenberger to take aim at hyperactivity on mainstream news.

Neil Earle, Arlington