From an article by Gene Weingarten in The Washington Post magazine about subjecting himself to 24 nonstop hours of punditry on radio, TV and the blogosphere. I’ll admit it made me laugh:
The best-informed person I ever knew was a friend of my grandfather’s back in the Bronx, where I grew up. Every morning of every day of his life, this elderly man — his name, as I recall, was Boris — would dress impeccably in a suit and waistcoat and shuffle to the public library, where more than a dozen of the day’s local and out-of-town newspapers were threaded through bamboo poles and hung from racks. One by one, Boris would read them all, front to back; at dusk, he would walk home alone. This daily pilgrimage was conducted with ecclesiastic solemnity, a quiet, dignified homage to the majesty of knowledge. Even as a little boy, in that intuitive if primitive way that children comprehend important things, I understood the fundamental truth that Boris was, in some clear but compelling way, a douche bag.
It is possible to know too much. It is possible to care too much. Hunger for information can become gluttony.
Weingarten’s piece is by turns hilarious and terrifying, and very close to the bone. And yes, we nod in agreement and then– at a somewhat less obsessive level than this– we plunge back in.
