1641 Naked News

I've talked a lot about how news stories seem to have more and more salacious headlines to bring them to the top of aggregator hit lists. But once the headlines suck you in, news folks also find it necessary to be negative.
Like the unemployment figures recently. A CNN story I read started out by saying "The U.S. unemployment fell sharply in November to 8.6%, the lowest level since March of 2009. Employers added 120,000 jobs."
Cause for celebration right? Especially during the Christmas shopping season, when every little bit of consumer confidence can fuel spending. And when spending's up, we can finally turn the corner and get American factories fired up and even more people employed again!
But no. The next line said, "Despite the improvement, the American labor market has a long way to go. Fewer than a third of all the 8.8 million jobs shed in the economic downturn have since been recovered."
Thank you CNN. I know you have a guy named Wolf. When did you hire that ass Eeyore?
Because really. That third’s about 3 million jobs. If we started out flat, and added 3 million jobs, we'd be in a boom. But because we started out in a 9 million job crater, adding 3 million jobs is supposedly bad.
The ever-exploding field of presidential candidates jumped on the apparently tepid figures and said, "not enough." Ironically, 2.9 million of the new jobs are in private industry and .5 million that were lost—that held the positive figures back—were in the public sector. A sector the big government-department-closing candidates would like to unemploy further.
So is the glass half-empty or half-full?
Both.
It's half-empty of people willing to be confidence-inspiring optimists that can get our country back on track.
And half-full of pessimistic asses.
America, ya gotta love it.