January 1, 2011 – Be Merry…and Melancholy.

I thought of starting this New Year off with a bang by introducing one of the more epic and perhaps controversial of the decrees that I had planned.  But then I figured, “It is a holiday after all and most of my subjects are probably suffering from hangovers right now so perhaps it would be best to ease the general public into the new regime.”  Besides, this specific decree directly relates to the New Year, or rather to news broadcasts shown around this time. 

On television, the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day is the prime time to see that piece of editing prowess known as the montage.  Now I LOVE a good montage so you would think that I relish this time of year and in a sense I absolutely do.  It doesn’t matter if I have never watched or don’t particularly like a certain news program or talk show.  Give me a good montage of its most interesting, funny, or poignant clips and I am happy.  Now some specific montages that are very common for this time of year are ones showing the numerous celebrities and other important or beloved persons who passed away in the previous year or ones that focus on the particularly important, and therefore generally negative, news stories of the year.  I tend to like watching these sorts of montages.  It makes me reflective and being reflective in this way reminds all of us just how sacred and fragile life is.  IT IS good to be reflective in this manner, but I don’t think it’s necessarily healthy to focus so heavily on everything that has been lost or has gone terribly wrong as one year closes.  Therefore I decree the following:

End of the year montages depicting negative events such as celebrity deaths or traumatic news stories that occurred in the ending year must now be followed by an equally long montage of positive events that occurred in the same ending year.

What are some examples of positive montages you ask?  Here are some suggestions:

·         Babies – It’s the very opposite of death.  Show some clips of adorable babies born in the previous year.  Thanks to copious amounts of reality cable shows focusing on birth it should not be hard to put some clips together.  Just stay away from shows like “16 and Pregnant” or “Pregnant and Addicted to Meth”.  This is supposed to be uplifting.  Feel free to mix in some endangered animal births too.  I think it is physically impossible to feel depressed while watching a fuzzy little panda cub.

·         Sports Victories – You might say that this is only positive for the winner (and fans of the winner) but watching the look of sheer ecstasy on an athlete’s face when they finally accomplish the thing they dedicated most of their life to always makes me smile a little, even if it was at the expense of my own beloved team.  I find the Olympics especially pleasing for this exact reason.  NBC can usually be counted on to give a victory montage every single day of competition.  What could be better?

·         Graduation Ceremonies – Caps flying in the air, parents crying tears of happiness, young people accomplishing something positive – seriously, why aren’t you using this footage?

·         Positive News Stories – OK it should seem obvious but if you regularly watch the news and really think about the make-up of each broadcast you should be struck by how little positive news ever gets covered.  Perhaps good news doesn’t sell but if news stations want to obey my decree (and they better obey) they will need to cover enough happy stories to make a montage in 2011.  You have a whole year to do it so I don’t want to hear any excuses.

This list is by no means exhaustive.  I look forward to seeing your creativity in fulfilling this decree and to being thoughtful and sad followed by being happy and hopeful when we reach montage season next year.

As always I remain your all powerful and benevolent Queen of the World,

Marisa