Not a Slow News Day

Today is not what you would call a slow news day.

Pope Benedict XVI passed away. Idem for Barbara Walters. Authorities in Idaho have seemingly rounded up the vegan lunatic who murdered four college students in Moscow, Idaho. Apparently, he wanted to see how it felt to murder and to see whether he could get away with it.

His name will now live in infamy. To some people it beats anonymity.

As though that were not bad enough, the world stock markets saw some $30 trillion evaporate. Pouff. Now you see it. Now you don't.

NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt sounds yet another tocsin of alarm about the mental health challenges that are currently overwhelming the forming minds of Gen Z-- that is, the cohort born after 1997.

All indications are that Gen Z is going to be the most dysfunctional generation around. Where Bernie Marcus, he of Home Depot fame, has declared that this group has become lazy and indolent because it was fed a bunch of socialist ideas, Haidt blames it on apps and gadgets.

Of course, it could be more correlation than causation, because someone somewhere seems to have decided that young people should have unfettered access to gadgets, even at the cost of not getting along with other young people.

One might call this a dereliction of parental duty, because that is what it is. But, when all is said and done, it’s easier to blame it on an app.