Today, I saw a headline in the Omaha World-Herald that read "Let this be a lesson to all you 6-year olds." The article was about a child who stuck his tongue to a lamp-post on purpose. Why are our newspapers printing this inconsequentialism?
Chesterton provides an answer. Somewhere (I can't remember where), he speaks of the "Silly Season" the time of year between political campaigns. Journalists, he says, call it the silly season because there is nothing to write about, so they turn to less-covered subjects. But it is the journalists who are the silly ones, Chesterton argues, for this is the time when they are actually freest to write about the issues that really matter: things like whether or not Christianity is winning or losing the culture war and what we can do about it.
Whoever wrote the tongue article was wasting their time. Let's hope they are not Chestertonain yet.
