Laugh, then Cry

I can't help but laugh at the slightly prissy-outraged-aunt tone of this Slate article decrying the tabloid headlines that get viewership on CNN, MSN, and Fox News websites.   I actually noticed this phenomenon not long ago, when I discovered the Fox News website's "most emailed" list – it is inevitably full of drama and tragedy relating to children, pets, and celebrities.  Go read the Slate article, I'll wait.

How many of those headlines were you tempted to click on? I clicked on three.  I shake my head because I wish people were more interested in "serious" news; but I suspect the alternative to people reading tabloid stories online is not people reading lengthy discussions of the subprime "crisis" so much as not looking at news websites at all.  If I remember to drop by the Fox News website, I'll usually read four or five of the most-emailed articles.  Why not? I'm into spectacle as much as the next person. That doesn't keep me from being a serious person who follows serious events, but if someone is writing about a Star Wars fanatic or overly-harsh punishments for high school students, I tend to click.  I happen to be into nerds, and I follow issues on teen rights and privacy issues as a hobby.  I, too, am fascinated (and saddened, and disgusted) by the downward (and downward and downward) spiral of our White Trash Queen, Britney Spears.  At the same time I wish the paparazzi would leave her alone, I keep clicking on the articles to read about her latest trip to Starbucks in lieu of making a court appearance in her child custody case.

  I know I'm contributing to the problem by clicking, and supporting the continued publication of the trash.*  But then I think, so if I boycott tabloid stories and columnists I hate, is it going to make one iota of difference? Nope.  So I click, and I read, and come away feeling slightly ashamed of myself.  To me, it's the modern equivalent of paperback romance novels.

* I actually feel the same guilty impulse when I click to read a Maureen Dowd column – I don't want the New York Times to interpret my click as support for her crazy, mean, sexist rantings, but I know that for the people who run the NY Times website, attention is attention, and it's all good for the "brand."