Out of focus...

On the comment, here’s my Paris Hilton story (other than the one about the time I ran into her in a bar). I have somehow made it part of my job description to know what songs our customers are currently listening to. Don’t ask me how I pulled that off, one day I was building a bond pricing model the next I was explaining the attraction of Nelly Furtado. Anyway, I was going through the list of songs and came across “Stars are Blind” and in a millisecond went, “Yeah, that’s the Paris Hilton single.” This has me concerned on two very different but equally important fronts: 1) Some of our customers apparently listen to this song and that bothers me to the core of my being and 2) I have evolved (or more accurately devolved) into a person who is well aware of Paris Hilton singles. I had to listen to New Pornographers CDs non-stop for hours to make up for that fact.

(Side celebrity note: While playing trivia last night (yes, it’s apparently become a full time gig) in the celebrity gossip category one of the answers was Lindsay Lohan and I immediately went “It’s my beloved.” I think we’ve now reached the point when even my teammates are concerned about me and given that this is a group of people who of their own free will answer questions on state capitals on a Monday night this is quite the accomplishment. Oh, and I totally kicked ass on the math category. Knowing that an angle in a triangle of more than 90 degrees is an obtuse angle finally came in handy.)

I want to talk a little about this JonBenet Ramsey guy and the media reaction to it. First, as I said before I am certain that this guy has nothing to do with it. I’m not saying that he isn’t guilty of something (because when you are arrested while in Thailand typically there are bad things afoot), I just think that the guy is delusional and going for his fifteen minutes of fame. My gut tells me that this is a guy who got obsessed with the case, read a ton about it, and convinced himself that he did it even though his ex-wife said he was with her at the time. And this is not one of those cases where you expect your ex-wife to be rushing to your defense with an alibi.

So let’s put that aside for the moment. Why has this story been such a hit with the media to the point that I have full details on the guy’s meal on the plane? It’s not like we have a dearth of big news stories right now (Iraq, Lebanon, terrorist scare, anniversary of Katrina, the list goes on). But the news media immediately jumped on this story. One reason is that people do love unsolved mysteries (especially when hosted by Robert Stack) because we love to see them solved. And this played like a bad movie with the evil villain being caught after years in a far away land. There is also the lurid attraction of the case with those still freaky pictures of the child pageants that draws people to it like moths to the flame.

But I think what is really going on is that when you look at that list of other news stories you really have America collectively sticking its head in the sand. Because we can all say that this is technically news, it’s the solution of a murder investigation. Except that it is almost certainly isn’t and all we are doing is focusing on a ten year old murder case when there are hundreds of more pressing issues. The thing is, all of those issues are tough to deal with and depressing and challenging so we’d rather focus on the creepy guy eating prawns in business class. CNN and Fox broadcast whatever gives them the best ratings and sometimes that holds a mirror up to America that we really should take a better look at.