Our Collective Attention Span Seems to be Waning... OOOH! A Squirrel!

"Downing Street Memo."

I haven't written those words in awhile... if I ever did to begin with, which I don't think I did. I'd remember something like that. It means something; this is important.

Of course, only 20 people in the last day wrote about it too, at least according to Technorati.com, so I suppose that I'm with the silent majority on this one. Twenty is not a whole heck of a lot of postings when you consider the vast universe of blogs out there [80 gagillion bagillion, roughly]. From June 19 to June 20, 2005, however, there were 370 posts in the same universe. A big decline there. The Associated Press first issued a story about the memos on 7 June. There was network news coverage by NBC on 14 June. After that I don't recall.

I barely remember what the whole damned thing was about. Something about Iraq, Bush, and maybe yellowcake uranium... although that sounds wrong. I can't even remember if the subject got dropped, resolved, debunked, or whatnot. As far as I know, the matter is closed and the good guys won.

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty... and so on.

I suppose that other things came up in the last six months: hurricanes, earthquakes, indictments, leaks, slipping poll numbers, casualties, Paris Hilton's romance troubles, the cancellation of Arrested Development; we've been busy. There's been a lot going on.

Our national consciousness stirs, wakes, rolls over, presses the snooze button, and goes back to bed. And the process repeats.

Perhaps we're lazy: sitcoms can be solved in 30 minutes... 60 tops... why can't Iraq?

Perhaps we're overwhelmed: hard to care about minutiae of an obscure British document when Brownie is messing up Louisianna.

Perhaps we're being flim-flammed: send in the clowns and spn doctors.

Or, perhaps we've lost our fundamental attention span and we now rely on bullet point nuggets of fact rather exploring a greater and more complex vein of truth.

Perhaps the next blog you visit will fill you with enlightenment and truth; there is none to be found here.

Oooh! A squirrel!