We have indulged too long in promiscuities of information. They have made us tired. There ensued pages and pages of nonsense news about the weird doings of bugs and Seussian creatures. The object was to make a child fall fast asleep. Too often the news just keeps us artificially awake, overstimulated.
Information overload produces attention deficit disorder.
For some time, we have been living in the rapids. We are all Oprah now. Bill Clinton, of course, was Niagara itself. The Music Man managed to turn even something as banal as the cost of his postpresidential office space into an outraged debate. George W. Bush has intuited this.