The Bubble Boy

Why are we so obsessed with such asinine things in life?   A boy rides off in a balloon, and the networks become utterly hyperfocused.  Twitter erupts, jokes, images, concern.  Do I sound callous if I say I do not care?  Even if the boy was in there, and he had in fact fallen to his doom, does it really matter?  Should we take our focus off the important things in life, such as men and women dying in Afghanistan, or the debate over health care?  And if we are going to take our attention off such important things, why does it have to be redirect onto something so useless in our daily lives?  Why not cut away from coverage of the dow reaching 10,000 to highlight a story of a young girl who beat cancer, or a story of a father who raised money for his local homeless shelter?  Why do we only focus on the good things, the truly important things, in a one hour special on a Saturday night when the news cycle is slow?

The boy falls to his death.  How many boys have been killed on the south side of Chicago in the past few months?  How many boys run out into the street to fetch a ball, and get struck by a car, instantly ending their premature life?  Do we drop everything we’re doing to highlight these tragedies?  No, because they are normal day occurrences!  Why would we want to focus on something so customary?  Let’s focus on the extra ordinary events that occur, no matter how utterly pointless and irrelevant they are; at least they get ratings!

The boy is fine, it was a big prank.  Instead of throwing our hands up in disgust, and forgetting these fools even live in this country, we continue to do the disservice of giving them our attention.  Larry King,  Good Morning America, The Today Show, how many people can ask them the exact same question?  How long until they get a reality show?

We have a serious disconnect in our culture, or our priorities are just in the wrong place.  People always complain about how fucked up the world is, but then they tune in every night to watch the news and see how many people were stabbed that day, or how polluted our water is.  Perhaps if we cultivated a culture of positivity, and a focus on the good in the world, we would notice a subtle shift in not only how we perceive our surroundings, but also in the fundamentals of those surroundings.