So much news is bad news. American soldiers keep dying in Iraq and Michael Schiavo (search) keeps fighting for his wife’s death and John Allen Muhammad’s (search) lawyers keep trying to make a case for him and how long can it be until there is another outbreak of violence in Israel?
So much news is trivial news. Rosie O’Donnell (search) is taking the stand in her lawsuit against publisher Gruner + Jahr and Michael Jackson might be doing a special for CBS and Madonna is trying to convert Missy Elliott to a controversial branch of Judaism called Kabbalah (search) and there are rumors that Britney Spears is dating John Cusack.
So much debate about the news is hostile and uncivil. The Bush policy for postwar Iraq and the fate of the Reagan mini-series (search) and the consecration of the gay Episcopal bishop (search) are all topics discussed on television these days with rancor and edginess, heat more than light.
And so there is not much left, not much in the way of news or talk to soothe the jangled nerves of reader or viewer. To find yourself well-informed these days is to find your blood pressure climbing.
But a few mornings ago I happened to be watching The Early Show (search) on CBS, and was reminded that there is yet another kind of news, one that few people talk about anymore and few people even present on the air, one that is certainly not important in the conventional sense but today seems a relief to an uncommon degree.
It is the feature story, the human interest story, the brief leavening of good news in the day’s catalogue of disasters and predicted disasters and looming unrest. If done right, without schmaltz or shtick or undue theatrics, it can raise your hopes about humanity at the same time that it lowers your blood pressure.
On The Early Show this past Tuesday, it was done right.
The reporter was a man named Jon Frankel, and his subject was Brian Simpson (search), “a severe asthma patient facing death,” a man whose doctor calls him “probably the most difficult asthmatic I’ve ever had to take care of. Brian is asthmatic day in, day out, never truly is 100 percent relieved of his asthma symptoms.”
But then something unforeseen happened, something seemingly impossible. Simpson’s love for music, especially for the playing of Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s principal oboist, led him to take up the oboe again himself. “Again” because Simpson had studied the oboe more than a decade ago as a music major in college.
As you might imagine, and as Frankel put it in his script, “Playing an instrument that seems to take an awful lot of energy--and breath--did not make much sense for Simpson, but he says, ‘At the time I really didn’t have much to lose.”
In fact, he had a great deal to gain. Again I quote from Frankel: “Simpson played the oboe out of a love for music. The miracle was that the more he played, the stronger his lungs got. First, he could play for a minute, then two.”
Now, somehow, “he’s able to play the oboe two hours a day, perform with a local orchestra, and reduce his medication. His lung tests are dramatic proof he is getting better. He says, ‘My [lung] volume is at 55 percent, up from 25.’”
Simpson has even been able to play with his idol, Ms. Koledo DeAlmeida, whereas a matter of months ago he could do no more than lie in bed and listen to her CDs. “The best news,” Frankel said, “is that Simpson hasn’t been back in the hospital in over a year.”
I hope he stays out for another year, if not longer. And I wish that more news organizations would seek out more Brian Simpsons and fewer murderers and celebrities and hot-tongued, cold-hearted conversationalists. I wish they would concentrate more on hope than on animosity, on what unites us as human beings rather than what divides us as partisans on one issue or another.
Now that would be news.
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