2009 hasn’t left us yet, but it’s not too soon to look back on the last of what Time Magazine recently dubbed “The Decade from Hell.”
This year, in the age of Twitter, Facebook, CNN’s I-Report, and the complete ballooning of the blogosphere, it’s now safe to call 2009 the Year of Distractions.
From Michael Jackson to Tiger Woods, we have been non compos mentis. In other words, we’ve acted like total nincompoops, blindly worshipping whatever offers us the first refuge from serious discussion and examinations of serious problems.
Today we pine for the times when a D-list star was considered someone whose fame lasted for 15 minutes. No one occupies the national mindset for only 15 minutes anymore. The Balloon Boy, who entered our country’s consciousness at the height of a critical Washington showdown on universal health care, is still in the news, long after his father’s 15 minutes of fame were up.
When drastic economic measures were taken to save our and the world’s economy from total destruction, we started to have a meaningful national discussion on the flaws of our economic structure — and then Michael Jackson died.
Coverage of MJ’s death lasted for 15 weeks. But at least he was a true celebrity, someone who almost deserved the amount of media attention that even a Pope’s passing can’t bring.
What, then, is our excuse for giving ABC’s “Good Morning America” a pass on offering Levi Johnston, father of Bristol Palin’s child, seat time on their cozy couches? There Johnston sat one early October morning, rehashing the horrors of living with Sarah Palin, as if somehow more than half of America needed convincing that Palin was just a political phantasm who had more in common with Carrie Prejean than any serious vice president prospect.
What’s Johnston’s claim to fame? He forgot that condoms had been invented.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, a critical debate was taking place inside and outside the White House over the merits of sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Right as the debate got good, two low-class-faux-reality television stars crashed a high-class White House state dinner.
Instead of depriving the now-notorious Salahis of the cheap fame they wanted, we put them on the “Today Show.”
The year of the Balloon Boy proved that it’s good we have a representative democracy, because only our elected leaders are capable of staying on topic.
Wrong. Even President Barack Obama went off message just weeks into his presidency to offer a “teachable moment” on race relations when he answered a question about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. What was the result of this teachable moment? A beer summit at the White House.
After announcing his new strategy for Afghanistan last Tuesday, Obama was probably thankful for the distraction Tiger Woods’ sexual escapades in his Escalade provided him. After all, no amount of rhetoric could explain away why 30,000 additional troops are needed to root out al-Qaida there, when his own National Security Adviser, Gen. James Jones, told CNN that “fewer than a hundred” operate out of the country.
Then again, what was I talking about?
Matt Christ is a political science sophomore. His columns appear on Mondays.
