Do you remember the Lebanon war in 2006? I do.
I got stuck in the United States and instead of spending two weeks divided in half - one half workshop one half vacation, I ended up spending two full months there.
CNN was covering the war non stop wall to wall. Interestingly one of their footage featured a burning building with civil defense people trying to end the fire with their scroller indicating the scene happened in Israel. As one member of the civil defense showed his back, turns out it was written in Arabic, so basically that was Lebanon - but I digress. Then, as war still raged, and after days and days of coverage, suddenly the war was relegated to simple occasional news flashes. News had broken that the killer of beauty queen JonBenet Ramsay had been caught.
Lebanon was suddenly on the backburner - pardon the pun.
Oh and the man who supposedly killed the Young Ramsay turned out to be an attention seeker, but - again, I digress.
If I am telling this story it is because, despite the enormous destruction, and even considering the scale of what happened, little by little fatigue us creeping in about the news from Beirut. How many times can you see or rewatch the explosion and still be amazed/shocked/petrified? With disturbing images being relayed on all possible media, little by little interest starts to wane before it disappears.
Famous British singer Morrissey (ex-lead singer of the Smiths) once said about Sir Bob Geldof (some months after the release of "Do they know it's Christmas"): "One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it's another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England." And sadly, by replaying the videos of the explosion, the same sinister images - even if the intentions were well-meaning - the end result is slowly backfiring.It does not take a Ph.D. to know that since 2006 attention spans are growing shorter and shorter. And that people are getting more fidgety about new information they can go to now that Beirut is starting to be depassée.
The image above says "don't stop talking about Lebanon" yet am afraid "it's another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of" the world.
Many people, despite what happened in Lebanon, are already moving, or are ready to move, to the next story. You know, something like the real killer of JonBenet Ramsey getting caught.