No One Pays Any Attention to Me: Fine!
Self-originating posts are not my thing right now. I do, however, react to other people's blogs, and I will post them here, as an immortal record of stuff I would have said at random over the telephone or with my mouth half full of food over lunch.
Of course, it's no secret that a lot of internet comm is inter-active based, I mean, people say stuff to get noticed, and to get stroked (or stoked.) That bothers me less and less since, compared to my too hectic family life, it really doesn't matter what people think of what I write. But at least this way I keep in practice.
So, a couple things .....
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I have noticed that the news cycles have been going very rapidly in recent weeks. Can it be that it was just 10 days ago that everyone was freaked out N. Korea's missiles? That got Iraq off the pages. Then Iraq came back, no, wait, trouble in Gaza, no, wait, problems on the Lebanese border.
In some vague way the crises are always the same, the outrage is always the same, the call for bold destruction always the same, and then someone changes the channel .....
I would not want to say that we are collectively being played. I would say that most people have an astoundingly short attention span, as well as a willingness to be led hither and thither by whatever news is passed on to them. Is life really worth living when it is so much at the mercy of some reportage of events over which, in fact, we have no control?
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I don't disagree that multicult is often used to put a minority POV that is attempting to become dominant on an essentially spurious (because undeserved) equal level with a majority POV. If that's what you are saying. In that case, we might call multiculturalism affirmative action for ideas.
OTOH,as a devotee of individualism, individual rights, and social libertarianism (even privacy rights) as a bulwark against the capabilities of modern governments to control and interfere with the lives of their people, I must say that any shrink-down of executive power is not going to be greeted with unhappiness in this corner.
posted by Steve @ 4:11 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Don't you think it's a little unrealistic to expect real world crises to conform themselves to our news cycles, or our attention spans?
No, it's not a question of expecting real world news cycles to conform with, say, the 7 AM and 7 PM (EST or EDT) newscasts.
It's a question of the fact that, every few days, or every week, some new story emerges that is touted as the biggest crisis in years, and it is promptly pushed off the front pages to be superseded by some new crisis, which is similarly touted.
Obviously, this cannot be. If North Korea having ICBM's is really that big a deal, then it shouldn't be supplanted by a kidnapped soldier in Gaza, alternatively, if the Israel-Pali thing is the dominant theme, then why are we wringing our hands about North Korea, etc. And I haven't even mentioned Iraq. Does that mean that everything is OK there now?
It seems to me there's an element of titillation in all this. I'm sure all of these problems are "real", but they are all longstanding, and therefore not worth getting freaked out about, and moreover, they are all deserving of something other than a manufactured media panic attack. Two minute hates have been supplanted by two minute anger management sessions.
Hey, how's that flag burning amendment going?
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