The last few days of every year bring a heightened sense of time passing, never to return. "Not always so," the end of a calendar reminds us.
When Time recently invited readers to pick up their mobile phones and participate in a "wireless poll," the question was: "Who's your pick for Person of the Year?" The magazine offered three choices in addition to George W. Bush. Those options -- Kofi Annan, Martha Stewart and the Boston Red Sox -- were certainly eclectic enough, typifying the grab-bag qualities of mass media. If there was any kind of common thread to the list (other than fame), I couldn't grasp it.
In fact, every day the array of mass-media fixations is a very big swirl of disconnects. The news terrain provides us with cornucopias of incongruities. We can be kept busy thinking about anything from the latest car-bombings in Iraq to Julia Roberts' twins. Often, media outlets seem to be weapons of mass distraction, trained on our brains...
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