Opinion: Too Much Useless Information, Too Fast

(March 12) -- Life is moving too fast, and I find that many days I only have time for the headlines. That is a horrible way to stay informed. How do people do it? With so many personal calls, e-mails, tweets, updates, meetings and distractions, it's a wonder anyone can keep up with anything important anymore.

In 1980, The Police sang: "Too much information running through my brain. Too much information, driving me insane." That was 30 years ago. The Internet hadn't even been invented yet. There was no cable, Facebook, 3G, Twitter ... nothing. And we already had too much information? Do we have any idea how under siege we are today?

This nation was born when word of war took months to cross the Atlantic and a response was another many months away. In 2010, with the first tremor of an earthquake halfway around the world, everyone with a phone and Twitter account knows about it instantly and help is on the way. What was a good FEMA response time in 1776? A year and a half?

I don't Twitter. I barely update my Facebook. I'm just not that interesting. Who really is? I think people should give their thumbs a break. Let others just wonder what you are doing. Drive them mad. They might use the extra time to pay attention to news they can actually use, but it's doubtful.

Look what happened with Dan Rather. He was on Chris Matthews trying to make a point about Barack Obama's ineffectiveness. He chose an analogy pulled from his Texas childhood, saying Obama "couldn't sell watermelons on the side of the road if he had state troopers to flag down the drivers." Pretty harsh criticism coming from the long-suspected leader of the "liberal media." But right-wing enemies didn't see that side of the story. They saw a perfect opportunity to instantly spread word of Rather's "racist" remarks. It started on Twitter, hit Fox News in a nano-second and became a headline faster than you can say "stupid choice of words."

There's just too much useless information moving way too fast.

That was essentially what Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., was ranting about on the floor of the House on Wednesday.

Kennedy, who is "retiring" at the end of this term, attacked the national press corps for only having two reporters in the House gallery. He accused the media of being despicable for their lack of coverage of a debate about life and death and billions of dollars in the war in Afghanistan, instead providing 24/7 coverage of the peccadilloes of suddenly retired Congressman Eric Massa of New York, whose only real accomplishment this week was to make Glenn Beck sound like a voice of reason.

Kennedy's rant instantly made the rounds on the Internet and became fodder for Kennedy-bashing on the blogosphere. But few reporters bothered to provide much coverage to the substance of the issue Kennedy was addressing.

And when NBC News covered the story, they, like everyone else, started with a story about Kennedy being outraged and went to a prolonged clip of Kennedy raving about the lack of coverage of the troop debate while Massa got all the media's attention.

But then the reporter came out of the clip and closed with ... wait for it ... "I tried to contact Eric Massa for comment ... but he was not available."

Talk about missing the point.