I was going to meet a friend for coffee yesterday. But when I called him, he said that he couldn’t because he was subpoenaed by the FBI to give a deposition in the Devlin case [1].
“Devlin case?” I asked innocently. You see, I stopped watching TV (as discussed here [2]), I don’t subscribe to the paper, and I don’t work in an office where I’d hear gossip or listen to drive-time news.
My friend proceeded to ask me if I’d heard that they’d landed a man on the moon, and other similar ludicrous media comparisons.
(I had a meeting later that day with a man who doesn’t believe in the moon landing [3], but that’s beside the point.)
As near as I can tell from my subsequent reading, this is a case about a couple of kidnappings over the years that police have recently and accidentally solved. Good human interest stuff, but is this really big news? Does following this case in local, national, or even international news somehow help protect our freedoms, or even our standard of living? The total number of people directly involved by Devlin over the years is significantly less than the weekly body count in Iraq, and that’s the official, died-in-the-field American service-persons count. I’m obviously not counting the subsequent dog pile of media and lawyers in the Devlin case.
I can see why the mainstream news is all over this case. It has much human drama: A monster, a survivor, crying families, a nominal hero, and many lawyers. But must I really be made to feel as though I am illiterate because I was unaware of this family drama?
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