Old Modest Mouse Album Title Reconsidered

The rock band Modest Mouse's previous album title (just now they have a new one) was Good News for People Who Love Bad News. I never really gave it much thought: that's not me--who loves bad news? Like their music, this one, when you come back to it, is pretty profound.

Here's the way it reasons out, logically: There is no such thing as good news for people who love bad news; the only thing that would be good news for them would be, by definition, bad news. Therefore, they should expect bad news, and be pleased by what they get.

It's a sure way to happiness.

The only trick, then, is getting to love bad news.

It's a habit of thought, non-intuitive. Something like an ideological, cult-like stance, to be sure, but not unique: pre-revolutionary Communists were always that way. Millenarian Christian cults still are, though the millennium is, definitively, past. (There is little recognition--so I will point it out--of the fact that the debate about the historical beginning of this millennium ended up being resolved with a clear, but totally unpredicted, start date: September 11, 2001) .

Journalists make a living on bad news, so most of them can make a virtue of necessity one way or another. The conscience of it sometimes drives them to drink or other unhealthy habits, but others like the pleasure of seeing others go down: Schadenfreude.

There's another group that makes a habit out of liking bad news, or at least deriving pleasure from it. The skeptics, the whiners, the old-fashioned curmudgeons; Evidence Supporting the Inevitable Apocalypse fulfills their pessimistic world view. We're going to try and stay away from that stance, that mental habit, even if I share many of the same perceptions. We've got no choice but to be optimistic; we have children.

Like Al Sharpton and the N-word, I won't say we haven't done it in the past, but we're trying to cut down.