Britney Spears Endorses McCain

Earlier today I was thinking about what it meant that Citizen's traffic roughly doubled on the day last week that I posted about Madonna. A few minutes later I found the answer, in Bob Herbert's column in today's Times.  

The column lists a litany of American woes that any developed nation should be ashamed of: our youth's subpar math skills; a dangerously decrepit infrastructure, which contributed to the destruction of New Orleans three years ago and the deaths last year of 13 motorists when a bridge collapsed during rush hour in Minneapolis; and insufficient funding for something as basic as safe drinking water for our people. 

Herbert could have added many more items to his shame list, but he has but one column, not the whole newspaper. And his larger point is far more important than being comprehensive in his detailing of our many problems. 

All of these problems have a common contributing factor: an unengaged citizenry. As I've argued before, we, the people are to blame for our worst problems, not our politicians. That's because we fail to demand better solutions from our leaders. Why? We're more concerned with reality TV, celebrity hijinks and all manner of other plaque that is clogging the arteries of our information superhighway. When we do pay attention to public affairs our attention is too often directed at pointing fingers and attacking those with whom we disagree, and too infrequently channeled to thinking about problems and working toward solutions. Herbert points a finger at the media for dwelling too much on all of this nonsense. What he doesn't say is that the media are in business to make money, and unless viewers and readers demonstrate more discerning appetites, they are going to continue to be fed spam in a can for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

Our system of government is not working properly -- not because it is poorly designed, but because we are not doing our part. And to contribute properly, we needn't make Herculean efforts. Simply keeping up on public affairs, thinking critically, forming opinions, voting and perhaps engaging one another and our elected representatives now and then when we feel passionately about a particular issue, is enough. But so many of us fail to meet even those minimal requirements of basic citizenship. Tens of millions of us fail to even exercise our right to vote. So instead of trying to solve our problems and talk to us like reasonable adults, politicians relentlessly pursue their own interests over ours and choose to communicate with us by appearing on The View, Letterman, Leno and Oprah, and by spending billions on 30-second, intelligence-insulting TV attack ads.

Herbert's column cites a 1985 book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. I'd never heard of it before but Herbert's reference — which implies that Postman thought our fascination with entertainment at the expense of citizenship was damaging our republic — has me intrigued enough that I'll probably buy a copy and read it.  

So, in case you hadn't figured it out by now, I'm basically calling you all simpletons who care more about Madonna — or a potential McCain endorsement by Britney, which, contrary to my misleading title, has not happened (but let's see how Citizen's traffic responds to that subject line...) — than about the health of our democracy. Well, not really. We — this blogger included — all succumb at times to the information age's shallower amusements. The whole reason this blog exists is to provide a forum where we can help each other to overcome those temptations, or at least minimize them, so that we can be the citizens our founders intended us to be. 

Or, as Jeff Tweedy said:

I'll side with you

If you side with me