American Television in Mexico & Exhaustive Self-Reflection

Apparently, writing yesterday only provided temporary relief to my anxiety, so we are back at it. Perhaps, yesterday seemed tongue-in-cheek, but today we will see that the self-loathing is too real. It’s getting annoying, isn’t it? That soon? Yikes…

I’m having trouble sleeping, which is further exacerbated by my daily decision to delay sleeping indefinitely. It is hard to fall asleep when you do very little and it is hard to do more than very little when you are consumed by anxiety. And, that’s what we call a cycle, folks.

I remember watching Bill O’Reilly on Fox News while on vacation in Mexico. Weird choice, I know. My sister and I could not find the television channel guide, so we kept scrolling through channels in Spanish. Perhaps, this would have been an ideal time for me to brush up on my rusted high school language skills, but I could not stand – and still cannot! – watching American shows dubbed in Spanish. It is so uncomfortable watching the words mismatch to the actors’ faces. It creeps me out. I don’t care if it is a first world problem. I would have settled for Mexican television shows, but it was channel after channel of American actors with the dreaded dubbed audio. So, we settled for Fox News, which seemed to be the only American channel that was still in American – I mean, English.

I had heard so much about Bill O’Reilly over the years, but I never actually watched him in his primetime glory. Note: this is prior to the public revel of the lawsuits and the subsequent dismissal from Fox. I nearly wrote “fall from grace,” but grace doesn’t seem like something even his supporters would describe O’Reilly as ever possessing.

He was actually a compelling interviewer from what I could see, except for how he constantly interrupted and shouted at his guests. I can’t really hold that part against him though as that is more of a chronic problem with cable news than him in particular. There was one part that perplexed me about his show. About twenty minutes in, he started a segment entitled the “No Spin Zone.” It sounded so official; he even announced it with a graphic that was also titled “No Spin Zone.”

I still think about it from time to time. What on earth is a No Spin Zone for a journalist. even a cable news one? Isn’t it all presumably no spin? Like, obviously, they spin it, but don’t they all pretend like they don’t? And, the part that utterly fascinated me, was that he announced it almost half-way through the show. Half-way! What was I just watching? Spin zone? Are we in the spin zone until you tell me we aren’t? Where are we after the segment ends? Back in spin zone?

My sister told me I was reading too into the whole segment, but every night that vacation week, between drying off from my afternoon shower and leaving for dinner, I entered the no-spin zone and left none the wiser. 

Is my anxiety my own private spin zone? A space where I tilt the truth that undermines my own worth. No clue. The existential dread that would accompany answering that question is a bit too heavy for a Wednesday.