A Fart in New York

A heated argument took place on the Lexington subway line in New York. In a packed subway carriage, a fart could clearly be heard and the passengers pointed out a man as the author of the resounding noise. He faced up to them, almost violently, claiming that he had done nothing, but at the next stop he was thrown off and the train carried on its journey with no further incidents.

This news, which has no importance, is not true. I have invented it to explain global journalism. Everything that happens in New York and, by extension, in the United States, has a global reach. Take the rumblings last week for example, according to which, New York was preparing to deal with the worst snow fall in history. Each day we had images, predictions, maps, calculations with that rhetoric of catastrophe typical of Americans. They need to feel the imminence of an apocalyptic peril, of a gigantic threat that could put humanity in danger, and it’s all the same whether it be a plague of killer butterflies or a Martian invasion. And, if they have no terrible threat, they invent one. Now we’ve found out that CNN has a video ready for the arrival of the end of the world.

The storm of biblical proportions that was going to bury New York turned out to be just another snow fall. Over there, if they like to get alarmed, just for the sake of it, well they will; however, it’s surprising that the entire world reveres its psychopathology. I don’t know what journalistic criterion is followed giving importance to New York’s obsessions and leaving the slaughtering carried out by Boko Haram in Nigeria as brief, telegraphic news items, for example. In January alone this delirious African sect killed thousands; however, as it doesn’t operate in New York, Paris, London or Berlin, the deaths are less important. Also, they don’t usually carry placards in English, which is the minimum requirement to feature in news programs around the world. Nowadays, a fart in New York or any other trivia is greeted as news.