I’ve ranted before in this space about the supremely irritating doom n’ gloom attitude that has descended upon our society over the past few years, right? What, I haven’t? And what’s that? Having a hypothetical give-and-take with the reader is a supremely irritating device? Anywho… I refer, of course, to the concerned/hyper-informed/bemused mien that we as a nation wear. Every day has SO MUCH GRAVITAS. Job creation is lagging! (Eh, happens during a fragile economic recovery) Our kids are fatasses! (But childhood obesity rates are leveling off) Billionaires are trying to get out of paying taxes! (Outrageous! Never thought I’d see the day) Just how many NBA titles will the Miami Heat win? (Who gives a shit? The season just ended and we still have to talk about this?) We’ve gotten into the habit of breathlessly assigning a DEFCON-4 level of importance to seemingly every bit of news that penetrates our frontal lobes. This trend, like virtually all of society’s ills, can be blamed on the 24-hour news cycle. There’s a lot of time to fill on a cable news station; competition for eyeballs is fierce, and being provocative is no longer, well, that provocative. The shouting pundits, news scrawl and the omnipresent BREAKING NOW graphic on a routine White House press briefing all work in concert to attract the attention of those toiling on the treadmills at your local 24-Hr Fitness. And yes, it’s all part of a never ending ratings-grab. But in the larger picture, we seem to have assumed a daily notion that each day is one of the most important days in all of history. It’s no longer sufficient to let a news story be; we immediately have to place it within the context of history. We’re led to believe that every news story has huge ramifications for everybody, and that’s just not the case. The fact that it’s an election year has a lot to do with it; according to each candidate, his opponent will stop at nothing to push the country further into the abyss. Really — thanks, guys. You’ve done your part to pummel the country into submission. It’s all so very exhausting…and unnecessary. Wake me when there’s an outbreak of levity.