VDH On The Anxiety Society

"Just as the nation could not breathe without learning the size of Dick Cheney’s shotgun pellets (I remember a Washington reporter calling me to ask what a 4-10, 20, and 28 gauge were), or the minutiae of Scooter Libby’s testimony, so now the fired federal attorneys hog the airways.

These may or may not be critical stories of the age, but my confusion is over their transitory nature: the world is supposed to stop over the Harriet Meyers nomination or Valerie Plame testimony. Fine, but why then do they become ancient history within hours? Various explanations: 24-hour cable news stations must create scandal and headlines; the NY-DC media is in a serial hysteria over George Bush; the inability of the American viewer to put up with a sustained analysis, etc. In any case the net effect is abject cynicism, with the public realization that what was supposed to work the nation into a frenzy will be sominex in three weeks—and all this tucked between fights over the corpse of Anna Nicole and worry over lost hikers."