Someone Must Care

In today's Too Much Information age (see blog posting of April 14, 2009) TNB often wonders just who cares about the relentless amount of needless tidings which we are bombarded with daily in every sort of media, whether newspapers, television and radio, the Internet (including the ultimate trivia explosion--forwarded E-Mails) and so on.

Obviously, the purveyors of all the many examples of TMI care and believe others do--someone must care, right? It apparently really matters to some people that:

• Barack Obama marked down "African-American" on his census form. Although it is arguable that releasing this information was unnecessary, sure enough, there was consternation that he didn't check the "multiracial" box. If you really care about this, TNB says "get a life" (in any hue).
• Jesse James (who TNB remembers from long-ago Wild West movies--or is this a different guy?) admittedly cheated on his wife, brand-new Oscar winner Sandra Bullock, with some heavily tattooed bimbo --thus rising from obscurity to become the bigger story, especially for those whose lives are so empty that they care about this.
• Tiger Woods, who was considered the ultimate athletic role model until last Thanksgiving when he overdosed on cranberry sauce and wrecked his car (and his image), managed on the eve of his golf return at the Masters to give the breathless public a little window into his self inflicted anguish. Please tell TNB that most of those who care about this story do so because of a fanatic devotion to his sport (golf, that is).

Perhaps what these and countless other examples signify is that we all need a form of release from all the frightening real-life things we should care about, such as the size of the Federal and State deficits, Ahmed Karzai threatening to join the Taliban, the ever increasing earthquake activity, and scariest of all, the Chicago Cubs losing their opener 16-5.