I don't know who at CNN is in charge of the "Breaking News Alert, but I can tell you that its power is being wildly misused. These in-mail detonations should be only be cranked up for stuff that is really important and interruption-worthy. But it's increasingly being used for stories that not only can wait, but are of dubious importance.
Breaking News abuse was particularly egregious during the Gerald Ford funeral, whose duration came close to being a second long national nightmare. And just a few minutes ago, news of the euthanization of Barbaro came trotting into my email.
For those of you who don't recall, Barbaro won the Kentucky Derby, and was expected to win the Preakness. Refusing to oblige, he broke three bones in his right hind leg, which prompted a national vigil of the kind America loves best: kid falls in well; mountain climbers get lost; miners get trapped; young woman in vegetative state becomes red meat for the culture wars.
So Barbaro, too, became the vessel for our national anxiety, an anthropomorphic projection of the Great American Virtues of grit, courage, and achievement. After his injury, thousands of people sent Barbaro get-well cards and the media hung on his condition like the cabinet clustered around Lincoln's bedside after Mr. Booth did him in. If only Darfur was as compelling.
I don't know how many surgeries Barbero had - you can check Wikipedia, who has documented his medical history with more attention to detail than you'll find in the charts of most inner-city kids. But I'd say he was under the knife more than Cher has been, and his surgeries were much more expensive.
In fact, the level of care he received at the University of Pennsylvania was virtually spa-like. As Wikipedia notes, "The center is renowned for its specialized care, especially for animals needing complicated bone surgery. Its use of a heated pool fitted with a "horse raft", electronic overhead winch and monorail offers the greatest available protection against re-injury by horses coming out of sedation after surgery."
The demise of Barbaro comes in the midst of a renewed focus on the unequal distribution of health care in this country. Yet nobody seems aggrieved that while Barbaro gets the treatment he has - and while people spend thousands of dollars to prolong the lives of their pets - there are 30 million people in the United States without health care. I know we've heard this calculus before, but it seems worth bringing up again in this context.
Why is it okay to spend without limit on Barbaro, or, for that matter, to invest a small fortune to find a couple of mountain climbers who should have known better? One answer is that America loves emergencies, amplified crises that give us a chance to focus our actions around a very specific need. Fixing health care is enormously complex and unfocused, which is why the current debate is all about villains; enemies, after all, are central to our received narrative architecture.
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In Governor Schwarzenegger's plan, doctors and hospitals are the enemies. That's why he wants to tax doctors 2% of their revenues to help pay for the uninsured, as if they are, somehow, responsible for the mess. (Why not tax lawyers 2% to fund those who can't afford their own ambulance chasers?) In New York, Elliot Spitzer has just demonized the institutions that offer health care - hospitals and nursing homes - and wants to break their financial backs by moving from an institution-centric model to a "patient-centric" approach. This will involve cutbacks to hospitals and nursing homes whom he blamed for the crippled system.
I find it enormously discouraging that on both coasts, what should be fresh attempts to address the health care crisis and create a new consensus - have defaulted to the usual hoof-pointing.
Meanwhile I hope that Barbaro finds open paddocks and winsome fillies in horsey heaven.
I'm also proud to live in a country that can afford to spend more money taking care of horses and ferrets than children. When that changes, it'll be okay for CNN to send me an alert.