I have an addiction. Every day I wake up I plod into my computer room and mainline tragedy. Other days I inhale the measured nuances of our rabid political machine.
No matter what the topic, no matter how inane, I binge and seldom purge myself of the never-ending cacophony of mindless minutiae that constitutes our daily mass media reporting industry.
I know whom both Nicolas Cage and Serena Williams are dating and I am indeed crying out for help. From the most “pop” of popular culture to the hardest of “Hardball” news, I am a junkie for any fact, no matter how trivial, which might temporarily fill in all the blanks, all the uncomfortable silences, which constitute my daily life.
I observe the media with the same morbid curiosity that compels us to look when passing the scene of an auto accident. Though consciously you feel concern for anyone who might have received grievous bodily harm, you secretly feel cheated if there is no ambulance present when you finally make it past the three-car pile up.
In other words, I watch and read news for the same reason NASCAR fans sit patiently and watch multiple rednecks make 500 left hand turns in a row. Eventually, one of them will forget himself and attempt to make a right and that, my friends, is when the magic happens.
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