This is why Deb isn’t allowed to go out drinking—it forces me to pick what to watch on television and I end up watching drivel.
Turns out last night when she was carousing I was watching a sad little show about JonBenet Ramsey and the did-he-or-didn’t-he confession of her alleged murderer on ABC’s Primetime “news” (quotes on purpose) show. The show was modestly interesting, but unnecessarily stretched out from what amounted to 6 minutes (maybe!) of new/real/interesting reporting into an hour-long special. From all that “coverage” (again with the quotes), one tidbit jumped out at me and I found it again on the front page of the article online…
JonBenet Ramsey’s murder mystery has consumed people. Consumers have spent 1.87 billion hours of time reading or watching news on the little girl.
Are you freaking kidding me? I am up to maybe 1.5 hours of active viewing/reading in the last 10 years (and I wasn’t so terribly active vegging on the couch eating Doritos wondering how drunk Deb was getting), but 1.87 billion hours? Imagine if people had been productive during all those hours. How many problems could have been solved?
Oy.
Friday | August 18, 2006 at 7:10 pm
30 years at MDOT, @2000 hours give or take. Other jobs since youth, maybe economically active not over 100,000 hours, even including unrecognized overtime. Suppose at crazy outside maximum that 0.87 billion hours was all the case was rationally worth. That’s a billion hours wasted, or, order of magnitude, 10,000 careers’-worth of time. The problems that could have been solved? Maybe so; a haunting possibility.
Or if all the billion-plus overkill hours came (as most did) out of people’s leisure or family-relational time, how much was lost?
I assume that whatever societal lessons were there about child safety and beauty pageants or whatever could have been wrapped up in a “mere” 0.87 billion hours of attention.
Monday | August 21, 2006 at 5:23 am
JonBenet was a cute kid that got murdered in an awful, horrible way. If my kid, well, on second thought that’s just too painful to think about.
Anyway, yes she was cute, yes it was tragic, if she were mine I would have been devastated, beyond consoling. But what about the 10 other murders in the Denver area that week? How come we never hear about any of them?
Monday | August 21, 2006 at 11:34 am
Wow, I wonder how many hours were spent by consumers on the OJ Simpson case? Or on Brangelina?
In my opinion, crimes against children are amongst the most horrible that can be committed. 1.87 billion does seem rather low to me.
Tuesday | August 22, 2006 at 11:07 pm
If that hours total were about all crimes against children, I’d take another look at it.
Wednesday | August 23, 2006 at 8:59 am
But if you think about the population, along with that number (1.87 billion hours) spread out over 10 years, it averages less than one hour per year per person. I believe I have spent more than one hour a year reading about the case, that is why the number seems low to me.
Wednesday | August 23, 2006 at 3:55 pm
1.87 billion-schmillion! How drunk did Deb get??
Heh
Wednesday | August 23, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Very…