We love watching the news channels while in other countries. They really cover world events; not just events within the shores of the US. They cover all the civil unrests; all the real life and death issues in every country and all the real people that are news makers.
The news told on foreign television and even in foreign newsprint is vastly different from the news told on the US airwaves. They tend not to deal with tabloid news in other countries and most people here don’t care and don’t know what is happening with Justin Beiber, anyone named Kardashian, or any of the other people out there who have a name but no talent.
Yes, they have their tabloid rags and the scandalous photos that go in them but everyone knows they are tabloid rags and they have zero credibility and zero power. In the US powerful people and even Hollywood wannabe’s all want their name and face to appear in as many of these rags as possible.
One of the things this centrist attitude has done sadly is that American’s don’t look outside of their own country to find noteworthy news. And I’m here to tell you, people outside of the US don’t care all that much about what the American people think is the best movie or the best fashion or the best car or the best anything. American’s do not make the world go round.
Just the other day these three stories reached out to me and highlighted how different the news is sometimes in a foreign country and what they deem to be important.
First story let us know that over 30,000 tons of road salt was headed from Torrevieja, Spain via barge to the eastern shores of the US. You see the US does not make all of the road salt that it needs in order to keep its roads salted during the winter, and its most likely cheaper to ship the salt from a foreign country instead of getting it from within the US. I’m going to bet no one in the US ever saw this story. I have to admit even I was shocked to learn that road salt was actually imported from foreign countries. I had no idea that we didn’t produce enough within the shores of the US to take care of everyone’s needs during the winter.
Next story dealt with the vast amount of motor homes that dot the landscape here in Spain. People are driving in from all the other countries to live here in Spain for a while and they are filling parking spaces at the mall, in the streets lining residential neighborhoods and setting up home for free. It is making locals crazy because they have no place to park when they go to the mall to shop. Yes, there are RV camps here in Spain; reportedly nice ones with all the amenities; but cash is tight and sometimes the people driving here don’t have the money to spend at the local camp ground. If you don’t think this story deals more with how locals feel about tourists and how they affect the everyday life here and peoples dislike of these motor home residents then you need to get a passport and travel more. You can rent these motor homes as well as drive them into the country and no one knows which is which. Therefore, if you do decide to travel here and you rent a motor home and then you get treated badly by the locals there just might be a reason they treat you like you have the plague.
Third story was located on page 14 of the newspaper. A couple of paragraph story about the Holocaust Commission, and its newest appointment; that of Helena Bonham Carter, Hollywood actress. What the story imparted was that Helena Bonham Carter was asked to sit on this committee because her grandfather was a diplomat based in France who helped to facilitate the escape of hundreds of Jews from the country during the Nazi occupation of 1940 to 1944. I’m almost certain no paper in the US even had this story in its pages; let alone that it wasn’t reported on the evening news. This story more than any other made Helena Bonham Carter seem like a real person to me and not a cookie cutter celebrity who just wants to get their name in the paper. She is a real person with a real family history and real empathy for others. She said, “I am very honoured to be asked to join this commission and do so in particular memory of those members of my family who died in the Holocaust and as an inherited responsibility to my grandfather who made a significant personal sacrifice to save hundreds of lives.” Isn’t this the type of celebrity story we should be talking about and not who had their Adam’s apple removed and how many bags of heroin were found in some dead celebrities hotel room…
When you sit down to watch the national news tonight know that somewhere we’ll be watching too. But we are watching the growing civil unrest in the Ukraine and Venezuela, and the demonstrations happening in Santiago, Sarajevo and Barcelona. We are not watching Hollywood wannabe’s and who is sleeping with whom or reading more about Simon Cowell and his newborn baby that he had with his best-friends wife; and we don’t care about anyone named Kardashian, Ritchie, Duck or Trump.
Florence Lince
Reflections 