I just dropped by FoxNews to see what’s going on in the world today and was faced with a grim, depressing, brutal reality: today’s news sucks.

1. It seems like a small thing--and it is in the context of some of the other stories of the day--but Patrick Swayze didn’t deserve the kind of headline that the National Enquirer ran. Jerks, Swayze was never a great actor, but I always like him. He’s done some decent movies, some seriously bad films, a bunch that fall in between, and more than I care to admit that I’ll stop and watch regardless of the category that they go in. Here’s hoping that the Enquirer was wrong about how far advanced the cancer is and that he continues to make the kind of entertainment that somehow rises above conventional standards of good and bad. He always seemed like a good guy to me.
2. Jajuan Holmes, an 18 year old boy who killed himself in front of his classmates, possibly because he had recently been charged with a robbery. What a horrible waste of a young life--and an example of why we should embrace a faith in redemption. I don’t mean that in a religious way--although that doesn’t hurt--I mean that in a practical way. People need to believe that even when they’ve screwed up they can still go on to find not only forgiveness but meaning in their lives. Some crimes are so beyond the boundaries of civilized society that I wouldn’t be able to offer up much in the way of hope; but this was a robbery charge. Proper punishment for crimes is important, but so is faith in the future.
3. A father who thought that a clothes drier was a Disney World ride might need a second chance, too. But he should probably get it without the responsibility of kids (a two-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy)--and only after appropriate punishment involving a little time in a jail cell. Obviously, he isn’t a fit parent, and that’s assuming that his story isn’t just something to cover up abuse that resulted in second degree burns on one of the children.
4. Some of the stories are just stupid people doing stupid things. Not horrific, by any means, but achingly dumb.
5. This is just a sad, strange story of elderly neglect perpetrated by a 94-year-old woman’s daughter.
6. And then, in Israel, at least 10 are dead and 35 wounded in an attack on a rabbinical seminary. Hamas, of course, “blessed” the operation and the deaths and threatened more of the same. Some days, I hope for peace; some days it just seems a mountain far too high to climb.

And that’s the news that I see today--almost all of it some unsubtle shade of bad. Tonight would be a good night to drink a beer or five, I think.