All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7 In order to understand the serial hysterias of the past few years, one must dispense with the notion that the news is actually the news. As I opined in my last posting, what we get from the legacy media is not "news", but merely "infotainment", scripted dramatics calibrated to titillate, enrage, possibly entertain, definitely distract, but never ever inform the public.