Stuff Matters.... Not!

There was a time when a distinction could be felt between "world events" and "news items of interest." The former had a gravitas, an importance, that gave people reason to be concerned with them. The latter, which included but was not limited to celebrity chatter, were mere distractions. But now the difference has become blurred. As stuff comes at us from the media in a daily avalanche, it all becomes less and less real, and paradoxically, people get increasingly worked up about it. The news. Wars, famines, international terrorism, a bank holdup, John Kerry's verbal gaffe, Mel Gibson, Janet Jackson's bra, a snowstorm somewhere else, it's all a big viral soup, a cultural drug fix that people have got to have on an hourly basis so they're numb to the fact that the twenty minute commute has become a ten mile-an-hour, hour-an-a-half ooze along clogged arteries twice a day. In explaining why he didn't read newspapers, Thoreau wrote that once he knew one farmer's cow had got onto the railroad tracks and been hit by a train, someone's barn had burned down, and someone's carriage had turned over, he was acquainted with the principle and didn't need to be subjected to endless variations.