So there's endless information available anywhere on the planet, vying interminably for your attention. People with MBAs work around the clock to keep your eyes glued to their story so you'll watch the ads they sell. In this race, news must compete head to head with all other forms of entertainment. Weather programs are compendium of natural disaster, chronicling alphabetically named storms from their emergence in the jungles of West Africa to their destructive demise along the Gulf Coast. Then you get your Local on the 8s. Trainwrecks are at a premium. One starlet after another implodes in edited slow motion for all to see, leaving a small space for another Disney Channel child actor to become a temporary sex symbol. Tell-all books hit the presses as soon as presidential administrations end. Every cough from the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a harbinger of Economic Consumption. Bloggers say whatever comes to mind.
In the middle of this unrelenting din of iniquity, some guy with a handlebar moustache and the Fury of the Almighty whispering in his ear decides to burn another people's holy books, and somehow enough is enough, even for the nuttiest among us. Fox News proclaims that it won't televise any footage of such an event. Serial racebaters decry this bonfire. The city of Gainesville, Florida is horrified to be the home of such unhinged demagoguery. An attention-whore preacher goes a step too far.
Let's celebrate this. America's immune system of ideas successfully repels a potential pandemic. The press, while free to do what they please, will not give this man his final platform. Finally, after such a sordid history, decency wins over the lynch mob. Maybe our 24-hour information machine is good for something after all. Maybe we're just good.
Even as the sages at Gatorade and Nike tell us that so much of winning is psychological, as soon as the commercial's over we're back to The End of The World Live Via Satellite.
For all the squawks and shrieks and scratches in the dust of the Chicken Littles getting rich off of doomsday, the public must reply with something noble and edifying. The world, America included, will be all right. The sun will come up tomorrow. We'll have food on the table and a roof over our heads. Our enemies, both within and without, will not destroy what's moral about us. At the margins, the world will be a little better in ten years than it is now. Your 401-k will come back. Someone will start hiring. We'll balance the budget.
This is optimism. When it comes to selling ad space, optimism is cheap. When it comes to our own sanity, it's the dearest thing we own.
It's 9/11 9 years later. God bless us all and give the world peace.
