Obsession

It's a general article of faith that Americans are dumb, especially among Americans themselves, who will constantly remind anyone who will listen, it seems, about how stupid their countrymen are. I've come to the conclusion that Americans are quite intelligent and highly educated... when it come to things that they're interested in.

Some pictures are worth 1,000 words. This one seems set to last 1,000 years.

I was in Target the other day, and came across this issue of People magazine, which has dredged up the Jonbenét Ramsey case. I would say I don't know why, but of course I do; People's editors are of the opinion that their readership is still interested in the case enough to by magazines and read about it. I would presume that they are correct in this, after all, predicting what the audience wants to read and giving it to them is their job, and I have no reason to think that they're bad at it.

The cover stood out for me mainly because I've considered the Ramsey murder case to be ancient history for past two decades, and the fact that it's a cover story, even with all of the other things going on in the world. People is, to be sure, a gossip magazine, as opposed to news or commentary. That's why it's in a rack near the checkout stands; that's where the gossip magazines go, because it's presumed that when older women go to the grocery store, this is the sort of thing that will catch their eye. No one has, as of yet, managed to elevate policy discussions to the same level of interest, even though a lot of political news comes off as just as gossipy as this cold case.

The difference, I think, is that the search for whomever killed a little girl nearly 30 years ago doesn't come with any expectation that the reader will do anything. They can just sit back and be, basically, entertained (although maybe diverted is a better word) by the story. A story about policy might come with, even if only by implication, a call to action. A cold case story rarely will.

The general disengagement of the public as a whole works better than one might presume. It serves the interests of the political system, since it limits the number of active stakeholders who need to be placated, and it serves the interests of the public by allowing them to place their attention on things that are valuable and/or interesting to them. These might be short-term interests, but sometimes, it seems that those are the only sorts of interests that exist.