I glance at the news. I know I really shouldn’t. One wants to keep up with what’s going on in the real world. But one only finds out what some people think about some of the events in the real world. And what some people think some events mean in the wider scheme of things. And that’s rather different from the events themselves.
One story that’s dominated the front pages for a while is that of a missing little girl. Which, sad as it obviously is to those involved, isn’t normally an event that should affect the country more than war or politics. But now it does. The case has been given such a massive amount of media coverage, it’s now gone into a phase of reporting ABOUT the coverage. Countless articles about how much is too much, how long should elapse before newspapers let the story fade from the headlines after no further developments, and so on. The coverage IS the news, which would have pleased Marshall McLuhan. Like those celebrities who become famous after going on TV programmes about celebrity, not before, the parents are now treated as if they are members of the Royal Family. Photos of them at every moment, every tear caught and published.
Emotional blackmail is thrown about from columnist to columnist like a self-righteous pie fight. This coverage is an insult to all the missing children who get far less attention, say one side. Have you no heart, say the other, the parents just want their message spread as much as possible. That’s just the point, say the antagonists. And so on. Heartless versus tasteless. If you’re not one, you’re the other. Do I find all this spiralling debate distasteful, or do I find the finding of it distasteful, distasteful?
The unasked and the entirely unrelated weigh in with their opinions, and I suppose by setting these thoughts down I’m doing just the same. But I quite enjoy the meta-news, the discussions and debates about what matters, to whom, and for how long.
The sad thing is, there will always be photos of lost children, all heartbreaking stills of frozen potential, repeated day after day as now. Until one starts to think one knows the victims’ faces better than one’s own. Which for me is saying something.
With this current case, people are starting to hold minute silences, keep vigils, and wear ribbons. The modern way of shared sadness. I personally wish people would stop being unkind to each other in general, with no exceptions and no singling out. I want a wristband or a ribbon which means “I’m against bad things.” All of them. All the diseases. All the syndromes. All the poverty. All the wars. All the bomb attacks. All the lost girls. But also all the lost boys and all the lost adults. The lot. No favourites. No selections. What colour ribbon is that?
This is the fine art of making the personal matter to strangers, until they care more for faces in the newspapers than they do for people they really know and should phone more often. Dreams, ideals, aspirations, are all thrown into the mix. And then there’s one of my favourite themes – what it is that makes people want to join in, to smother their individuality. To not look ‘other’. To not be out of place, or off-message, or have any sentiment that differs from the one being sold to the masses.
I try not to be cynical about sensitive popular concerns (Reader’s Voice: Are you sure?), but I do worry at how easily – and how often – good intentions can be fanned into a kind of hysteria.
