When the news became the show
“One Life to Live,” “As the World Turns,” “Guiding Light”— the soap operas of my youth. I never watched them. Real life offered enough mystery and unpredictability; I saw no need to wander into a scripted world of manufactured drama.
And yet, somewhere along the way, it feels as though the script found us.
In recent years, the daily news has shifted from something meant to inform into something that often seems designed to provoke, shock, and entertain. Each headline strains to be more unbelievable than the last. The line between reality and spectacle has blurred to the point where I’ve come to expect the unexpected—and then some. It seems that any event, any scandal, no matter how far-fetched, now falls within the realm of possibility.
What’s next? Rumor has it that Dartmouth College will be renamed “Trump College,” that a toll booth is going up on the Ledyard Bridge—five dollars each way—and that the new five-story buildings on West Wheelock will soon be converted into ICE detention centers.
Absurd? Of course. And yet, in a world that so often outpaces imagination, even the absurd no longer feels entirely out of place. I almost expect to see bars appearing on the windows.
Perhaps that’s the point. When everything begins to feel possible, even the implausible starts to seem plausible. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. And surprise quietly slips away.
So maybe the choice is ours: change the channel, tune it out, or simply accept that this is the program now playing.
After all, as they used to say — that’s “As the World Turns.”