Do you ever wish the news felt less like homework and more like chatting with your friends?
— from a Washington Post opinion piece by Adam O’Neal, May 11, 2026
I never felt that reading the news, or watching the news, was “like homework”. I would describe it more like “therapy”. Hearing about all the terrible things happening in the world makes me feel lucky to still be alive, with clean sheets on my bed and a six-pack in the fridge. I get the impression, from the news, that a lot of people don’t even have sheets, or a fridge. So I get to feel special.
But also humble.
However, writing about the news can sometimes feel like “homework”. As most journalists know very well.
Adam O’Neal, quoted above, works in the Washington Post Opinions department, and he apparently got tired of sitting alone in his bedroom churning out opinions. Apparently, it felt like homework. So he talked his editor into a different approach. He invited a few friends — who are also journalists? — to sit around in what looks like Mr. O’Neal’s living room, surrounded by video cameras and microphones, sharing their opinions with the world watching.
Or maybe not the whole world, watching… but at least a few people like me, who are curious about how other journalists make a living.
It’s entirely possible that this is not Mr. O’Neal’s living room, but rather, a custom movie set built to look like someone’s living room. I don’t see a TV in the room, for example. Or dog toys.
If this show were being filmed in my own living room, I would have offered everyone a beer. Conversations always seem more interesting after everyone has consumed a bit of alcohol. Or passed around a marijuana pipe.
I mean, are these people really Mr. O’Neal’s friends? They look kind of serious, in the above photo. Almost as if they are doing homework.
Like, where’s the beer?
Back when I was a kid, “the news” didn’t seem so much about opinions, and more about “just the facts”. Unfortunately, many of the “facts” were generated by the Government and Corporations, and were actually “lies” aimed at keeping us all in the dark about what was really going on.
That problem has only gotten worse. When I sit around with friends to chat about “the news”, it often feels like we’re living on completely different planets. In separate universes.
Like, which lies do we want to believe? Take your pick.
When chatting with a friend last week, for example, my friend asked if I knew how the U.S. government managed to get itself $38 trillion in debt — more than the total GNP of the entire economy. I suggested that our elected leaders had been borrowing money from, for example, Social Security and Medicare. My friend suggested that I was an ignorant fool (although not in so many words) and that the debt was, in fact, being fueled by unwise purchases of Treasury notes by the Federal Reserve.
The Trump administration was going to fix that problem, my friend told me.
I will readily admit I’m an ignorant fool. Aren’t we all? Especially certain people who will not be named.
But according to a little chart I came across, it looks like the federal government has borrowed about $7.4 trillion from Social Security and other federal agency bank accounts… and only about $4.6 trillion from the Federal Reserve.
Most of the investors are foreign governments and other kinds of investors, earning plenty of interest on their Treasury notes.
Reportedly, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed last year will allow the U.S. government to increase the debt to $41 trillion. So we can look forward to that, at least.
But all of those figures, in the chart above, are coming from the same government that we know is lying to us.
On the bright side of things, my friends and I may be ignorant fools, but at least we aren’t liars. Usually.
If I chatted with my friends only about things I actually knew something about — like, for example, the current weather, or the price of eggs at City Market, instead of “the news” — I could probably avoid looking foolish.
Knowing this as I do, doesn’t explain why I am writing this morning about “the news” instead of sitting around chatting with my friends.
But for heaven’s sake, someone has to play The Fool.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.