Broken news

Take a deep breath - feel like you're chokin'?
Everything is broken. - Bob Dylan

Know the feeling?

Even the news, once breaking, is now just broken. That's not to say there's been an interruption to the datastream. In fact, that's the problem. The datastream clips along without pause for either reflection or response, which is just fine for some. Today's bombshell becomes yesterday's bombshell, which means few people will still hear it exploding over tomorrow's bombshell. And with so many bombs going off, we should expect to be somewhat deafened, and perhaps a little shell-shocked. Perhaps a lot.

We're informed, whatever that means. But the datastream is unforgiving of analysis, and if we stop to mull over something we soon fall behind. But you know what? Maybe falling behind isn't the worst that can happen to us, if remaining current means we're destined to be ineffectually overwhelmed.

Here are three stories you probably know, which deserve deep analysis, but which will likely be buried by next week's calamities and outrages:

The latest episode of That's My Guckert! courtesy of Raw Story. Beyond his more than 200 visits to the White House, there are the questions of what he was doing there on days no press conference was scheduled, why he sometimes used uncommon entrances, and how he pulled off the David Copperfield-like tricks of signing in without signing out, and signing out without signing in. The story was picked up by AP and a rather bloodless version ran in The Washington Post, which is still something, since before the story broke the Post informed Raw Story it was "finished" with Guckert. But were does it go now? The story will not be led from the front; the mainstream still has a telling chill about this story. (And I refuse to regard Bo Dietl as in any way mainstream.)

The revelation that Neil Bush co-founded a Swiss-based ecumenical foundation with then-Cardinal Ratzinger in 1999. Joining the two were assorted theologians as well as Bush's longtime business associate Jaman Daniel and Prince Hassan of Jordan, President of the Club of Rome. Bush, it needn't be said, is hardly regarded for his attention to religious causes. Neither is Ratzinger noted for his ecumenism. Curiously, the foundation is listed by Dun & Bradstreet as a "management trust for purposes other than education, religion, charity or research," though an official claims the designation must be a mistranslation.

Sibel Edmonds' implication that "laundered drug money linked to the 911 attacks found its way into recent House, Senate and Presidential campaign war-chests," and "not a single newspaper" is covering her appeal in federal court. When Tom Flocco asked her how many Americans were named in the intercepts she had translated for the FBI, Edmonds replied, "There is direct evidence involving no more than ten American names that I recognized," and that "some are heads of government agencies or politicians." (Any editor think that could make a story?)

When everything is broken, it's hard to know where to start; which pieces to pick up first. But better anywhere than nowhere. Also, better anywhere than everywhere. Otherwise we're Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory. There's no chance for quality control when the conveyor belt speeds up, if all we mean to do is keep up. Stuffing our heads isn't the same thing as feeding them.