After the September 11th attacks, the ONION ran the great headline ‘A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Shit Again’. Well, much to the world’s relief, that day has long since arrived; just check out which articles are the ‘most read’ at the Huffington Post. On a day where the United States congress passed landmark financial reform and North Korea threatened nuclear war, the most read stories feature Bird Poop at a Kings of Leon concert, a list of funny awkward family photos, and Snooki.
Considering the public’s lack of hunger for legitimate news and information, it’s with little surprise that the leak of official government documents painting the war in Afghanistan in such a dire light produced such waves. Wikileads, which then disseminated the information through the New York Times & the Guaridan, released 92 000 secreet documents about the Afghan war, all of which painted a pretty grim picture. As SLATE’s Fred Kaplan summarises;
Some of the conclusions to be drawn from these files: Afghan civilians are sometimes killed. Many Afghan officials and police chiefs are corrupt and incompetent. Certain portions of Pakistan's military and intelligence service have nefarious ties to the Taliban... If any of this startles you, then welcome to the world of reading newspapers... today's must be the first one you've read.
But unfortunately to the general public, it took the mystique of leaked government documents and secret memos to get the public’s attention.
The other night while dining with a few casual friends a few months ago, the topic of travelling came up. When one friend suggested a trip to Thailand, the rest of us responded with a questioning look. “You heard there’s essentially revolution going on there, right?” She was surprisingly proud of her ignorance; “I have a job and a boyfriend... I don’t have the time to follow the news.” Her tone suggested that following the news was a bourgeoisie luxury, as if having a job (she was hardly splitting atoms 12 hours a day) and procreating excused her from such responsibilities.
It was essentially the Sherri Sheppard excuse, the television personality who famously claimed not to know whether the Earth was round or flat because she was too busy trying to feed her child. (Barbara Walters accurately retorted, “You can do both...”)
Of course, to pretend that I’m not immune to such tabloid, sensationalist fodder would be a lie. While i try to stay abreast of all the world’s big stories, I find myself reading Lebron James gossip as much as updates about the BP oil spill. Given the chance to watch the Mayoral debate last night on television, I chose to watch cooking shows on the Food Network. Granted, looking at the crop of mayoral candidates the quantitative knowledge gained from each program would have been relatively equal, but I could have at least tried. You yourself would have probably rather be reading something I wrote in regards to the World Cup.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that people associate following the news as ‘work’, and once their 9 to 5 is over, people want to do anything but work. So if you can’t nudge people into staying informed by appealing to their responsibilities as citizens, what can you do? How about appealing to their desires not to be a bore?
I’m often amazed at how friends and I, despite meeting for drinks at least once or twice a week never seem to run out of things to talk about. And how could you, when you make a point of staying abreast of world events? Where there are eight or nine well-informed minds, there are eight or nine interesting, diverse opinions.
When trapped in conversations with those less-informed, I find myself inundated with the same banal anecdotes, and inane conversation-filler. There is nothing elitist about wanting to be surrounded by people who take the time to make themselves interesting.
There's nothing less attractive than someone who's stupid and proud of it.