The Awful Foibles of Baubles

Maybe you don't read Steve Goldman at the Pinstriped Blog because you don't like baseball (and what's your problem?). Maybe you don't read Steve Goldman at the Pinstriped Blog because you don't like the Yankees (well, that makes some sense). But if you're not reading him, here's the kind of thing you're going to miss:

I don't know about where you live, but I've got 600 channels of distraction, a bunch of DVDs for when all of those channels aren't showing anything, a couple of dozen web sites I check regularly, a large library of books, and subscriptions to a bunch of largely frivolous magazines. I've got MP3s and satellite radio. There's a coffee bar five minutes drive to the north, a movie theatre five minutes drive to the south, a sports bar in between, and a good dozen mediocre chain restaurants where the entire staff will clap and sing "Happy Birthday" to me whether it's my birthday or not. And so we pass the days of our lives, feeling no pain. Yet, if I write "Gee, it sure seems to me that Donald Rumsfeld is less on the ball than Tony Womack, ba-dum-dum," I'm suddenly forcing you to confront the horrors of the modern world. I don't think so.

Part of me wishes I was doing that, because I figure that those of us who are fortunate enough to have a soap box for any purpose owe it to our readership, to our countrymen, to offer just a little less distraction once in awhile and call attention to the big picture — because it seems like there will always come a day like today when you can't look away, when New York calls, when London calls, bleeding, and we are forced to ask ourselves, "How did we get here? What are we going to do about it? What is the right thing to do?" and the answer comes: "I don't know. I was watching Dancing with the Stars."

Go read the whole entry to learn how rhetoric doesn't always follow the adjective empty.