New Mexico is a great state. I love the landscape and the skies and the lack of traffic and pollution where I live. However, there is an issue that is making me a wee bit ashamed of my home state: Our news sucks.


There, I said it. It sucks. Sucks sucks sucks. That is the only appropriate description of NM's news outlets. There are a few good newscasters who can pronounce most of the words without stumbling (I love you, Tom Joles), but for the most part, the young newspeople look like idiot refugees from a used-car dealership. Someone should tell them that using a lot of makeup and hairspray won't cover up their stupid.


The worst part of this is the printed/online news. There isn't a decent newspaper in the state, and the online versions of the news stations aren't any better. They're a sort of gossip column, but expanded. Take yesterday, for instance: I'm cooking dinner while my husband is reading the online news from a major TV station in Albuquerque. He starts laughing and says, "Oh my goodness. Did you read the article about the cop who got in trouble for looking at porn on his cell phone?"


Wow. Apparently, that's a major news item. A cop decides to look at porn on his phone, and then have a little...ahem...personal partay in his car WITH THE DASH CAM ON. Okay, so it's hilarious, but it also makes me wonder why the news needed to describe it in such detail. Maybe that guy has a family and kids who don't want to hear about what he does when he's bored at work. Granted, I think they tell the cops that there are dash cams in their cars, and I think the cops know that they record sounds and stuff, but still, it's just tacky.


So why am I talking about it? Well, for one thing, this isn't a newspaper, so there's no guarantee that any of this stuff isn't made up. I could've just invented all of the crap on my blog for kicks. Also, I have no life, and I've never made any secret of that fact. So anytime anything even remotely funny happens, I store it in my ginormous cranium for later use in my blog. Finally, I never said I wasn't tacky. Deal with it.


Maybe I should become a newsperson. Nope, I would giggle anytime I had to report a story like that. "The police officer then...hee hee hee...they heard a zipper noise...hee hee hee...apparently talking to the woman whose picture he was...snort." I guess that wouldn't be too effective. Not that the ones they have now are effective, but really, they're just reporting gossip for the most part, so does it matter?


I think they should just have pictures of puppies and kittens on their websites. And babies. Wait, I think they do have pictures of babies sometimes. Well, anyway, they shouldn't put in details that are gross. Now, every time I pass a police officer on the road, I'm going to think he or she is looking at porn on his or her cellphone (I'm trying not to have gender bias here...maybe some lady cops do that, too, but I like to think they'd be smart enough to have a dash cam "malfunction").


I wonder what the news is like in other states. I'm sure in places like Kansas and Nebraska it's got farming info on it, and in places by the ocean, they probably have oceany types of news. I don't know. Maybe I should've paid attention the last time I was in another state. I do know for sure that Colorado's news isn't much better, so that's comforting. At least, their TV news isn't better. I'm not sure about their print news, since when I'm there I'm usually on vacation so I don't read the papers.


Point? Wait, was this supposed to have a point? Naw. I just like to tell other people what they're doing wrong. Oh, and I needed a story involving our lack of good news along with a cop having way too much fun on the job to round out the subject matter on my blog. Now I need to be on the lookout for a good topic that involves Christmas trees and toothpaste.