The Rising Plague of Mainstream Media's Attention Deficit Disorder

I hear loud clapping. hmmm... oh! Wait... it's in my mind! Gerard, it's for you! And this brilliant post. Bravo!

I came up here to fire off a blistering missive to Bill O'Reilly for committing all three of the sins you listed for him. He so trashed two regular guys on his show tonight that I was raging. Instead I found your article, and while your words fired me up, they also calmed me. I'll not waste my time on Mr. O'Reilly. Instead I'll tell you this: I read tons and tons of stuff - magazines, books, blogs, and I watch a lot of news. I come to your web site to be calmed by your brilliant exposition and to focus. Yep. To focus. SO nice. And it's nice, as well, that your audience seems to feel the same way with thoughtful, on-target comments. I bow to you for this.

Posted by Amy at March 11, 2005 7:24 PM

Damn it man ... fucking BRILLIANT! The best
written assay of media I have ever read. ANYWHERE. Thank you amigo. I just remembered I
have to send 20 bucks for the blog thing ... slipped my mind, I'll write it down this time ...
but I want a signed copy of this too. Shall I assume another twenty ?

Posted by Steel Turman at March 12, 2005 2:27 AM

ADD is a member of the class of labels that seem to fit almost anyone you'd care to choose. It's akin to "passive-aggressive" (just who isn't?), especially when applied in a non-clinical way. However, America sure seems to have cornered the market on this behavior (at least in sales of amphetamines meant to attenuate the manifestations) and I was lead to the conclusion (when the tag "ADD" was first popularized) that the US is a "strange attractor" for ADD.

If you think about it, it makes sense in the same way that the theory about Western Europeans breeding 5 IQ points out of the gene pool by putting the best and brightest in monestaries and abbes for 1000 years makes sense: if you were easily distracted and tossed by the eddies in the stream of consciousness, where in the world would you go? Why, America, of course!

Every fidgeting, inattentive person in the world (presuming the wherewithal) gets on a boat or plane and heads away from wherever they were and right toward the good ole US of A.

After a couple hundred years of this, is it any wonder we're a veritable "ADD Cluster" here?

Posted by Paul Dirac at March 12, 2005 2:54 AM

It's not often you get metaphors of the Metropolitan Opera and garbage dump bears in the same paragraph.
Aside from the purely commerical aspects of the ADD syndrome, at work here is the basic magician's trick of keeping you distracted so you don't ask that perenial question "I'm supposed to care-WHY?" As a matter of self-examination, a relevant question here is, when faced with this babel, do you tke notes? If so, you've been exposed and are dealing with it. (And trying to get back on subject.)

Posted by ed in texas at March 12, 2005 5:08 AM