I have one problem with my mother-in-law.

(“Only one?” you ask. Well…)

Anyway, I have one major problem with my mother-in-law, and it’s a thorny conflict whenever she visits us for a week or so.

She’s ADDICTED to late night TV news.

It seems she can’t go to bed peacefully without watching it.

Now me, I’ll usually pop something like an old William Powell-Myrna Loy movie into the DVD player before night-night. I don’t need to stuff the past day’s gloomy headlines into my head before it hits the pillow.

But my mother-in-law, before she descends into blissful slumber, needs to know about murder trials in Florida or which politician’s been sexting his girlfriends.

You see, I’ve never found that the nightly news makes me a better or happier person. It certainly never empowers me to be more free.

So I skip it.

I also tend to shrug off emails from people who relentlessly schlep me links to negative media. And Facebook friends who post only dreary news items often get blocked or even unfriended.

“But knowledge is power!” you might shout.

Yeah, I agree.

But I also agree with my friend Claire Wolfe, who wrote recently, “If somebody’s got smallpox, you don’t have to creep up close and count every lesion on his face to understand how sick he is.”

My rule of thumb — be aware of the news, but don’t wallow in it.

Most of it has no effect on your life or your relationships or your business.

Fact is, most of it isn’t really news anyway. It’s manufactured pablum for the unthinking masses.

It doesn’t make you smarter.

It just makes you more pissed-off, frustrated, cynical, and depressed.

You’re too good a person to expose yourself to all that crap.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. I know you’re gonna suggest I make my mother-in-law watch the late night news in our guest room. Don’t even start.