...and I'm kind of scared. In early 2001, If anyone can remember that far back, shark attacks were the big story. Sharks that bit people, sharks that were pulled ashore by uncles, sharks, sharks, sharks. My friend DTUndacova wrote asking what all the shark attack news was about, and I replied it must be a slow news cycle.
I also wrote something would come along soon and we would forget all about the sharks attacking people, because that happened every year and wasn't truly "national" news. I never thought it would be people flying giant planes into giant office buildings.
Every once in a while, we hit a slow news span, and local news gets confused with national news. We start to follow a story about a baby that was almost hurt in a hot car. Not hurt at all mind you, kind of a close call though. This is a story that could be run every week. Babies make you tired, and lack of sleep makes you unable to perform basic tasks.
You have a baby that cries at night, and your life goes on autopilot for a while. You try to drive to the supermarket, and you find yourself in the office building parking lot wondering why you left the house. Decisions don't get made on somedays, and tragically, sometimes you forget you had a sleeping baby in your car.
This is tragic for the parents, but we still bring them into court and decide what to do with these fiends. Sometimes, we put them away for years at a time, sometimes we feel bad and let them go on with their now guilt ridden existence. Happens all over the country, and it may happen to me someday. I hope it never does, but I know what it's like to not sleep for a few days, anything is possible.
We have hit the point in the news cycle where near misses are being reported nationally, so we have lost sight of what national news is once again. Maybe it will be floods, or earthquakes, or riots, or a new Great Depression, or... just about anything. People will ask if it's the end of the world, or the beginning of the end. It's the end of a news cycle, the end of an era.
People don't care what color the alert system is anymore. You could print the terror alert level signs on a novelty t-shirt, no one would bat an eyelash. That's the good news. People are a lot less afraid of terrorist these days and seem to more concerned with parent leaving babies in cars and if Paris Hilton remembered to put on underwear.
Less irrational fear about terrorists is a very good thing. I'm just waiting for the next irrational fear that's going to sweep the country, and I'm worried about whose going to have to pay for our fear.
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