Are people burning out on the Obamacare debacle?

That's a question occurred to me when I saw this ludicrous list of "most read" articles in The Daily News:



Is everyone crawling deep into the low-information/aversion-to-politics hole?

IN THE COMMENTS: Henry said:

1. Not too sexy for Obamacare.
2. This cat is covered.
3. Drowning is not covered.
4. Early adopters don't.
5. Beer goggles are covered.
6. Fat kids cost the same as skinny kids.
7. Obamacare will make you go blind.
8. Whats with all the kids?
9. Self-employed Comedian live-tweets insurance loss.
10. Birth control is free. Don't you people listen?

"I’ll still keep up an online presence, particularly on Twitter.... I find it calmer than Facebook."

Writes Kenneth Burns, the erstwhile Isthmus writer (who's moved to Tennessee). He's deactivating Facebook at least for the summer.

Mainly, I’m weary of the politics. Understand, I’m fascinated by electoral politics, like any journalist. I have my views, and I express them in the polling booth and not many other places. Not on Facebook. I’m not interested in politics as an all-consuming leisure activity.

In my experience, though, Facebook is one rabidly political social network, and it’s not political in inspiring ways. It’s political in reductive, repetitive ways.

But why has his Facebook experience been so rabid and uncalm compared to Twitter? He's got himself to blame:

[M]ost of the political memes on my feed happen to be posted by people I don’t know. As a public figure, I regularly get friend requests from strangers, and I accept them.

Why did you accept them? I don't do that. Facebook is a way to see stuff from your family and friends and to find old friends from high school and college. But it won't work like that if you accept 1,000 requests from strangers! In Twitter, you have your followers, but you don't have to follow them. That's the difference. Even when you are following people in Twitter, their posts just flow by unread unless you look. I drop by Twitter now and then and read a few posts from random tweeters among the 121 that I follow. And as for the 4,765 who are following me, I haven't given them anything in over a month.

Quokka.

Another sign people are tired of having to think about politics.

Signs that people are tired of thinking about politics.

Here are the "most popular" stories in The Washington Post right now:



#1 is Michelle Obama's ass. #4 is a bird laid an egg. And both of these are stories that I blogged yesterday. The First Lady's ass attracted 197 commenters here on the blog. I blogged the bird story too. In the comments, Inga made fun of the WaPo headline saying that the bird had given birth, and I note this morning that the headline has been rewritten, and now it's producing a chick. But there we were, talking about whether it's silly to say a bird gave birth.

Give birth is an interesting expression, even as applied to mammals. Which is my point: What is interesting this morning? Something tells me it's not politics.

Meanwhile, even politicians seem to know we're tired of dreary politics. Apparently, Republicans want to win us over with "happy talk" — #3 on that list:

At a retreat for Republican leaders last month, former House speaker Newt Gingrich told them to “learn to be a happy party” and a “cheerful” one, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said they should be a party “that smiles.”...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor took this don’t­worry-be-happy strategy seriously, and in a heavily promoted “major” speech to the American Enterprise Institute [that]... began with an uplifting anecdote about the Wright brothers and quoted the inspirational words of Emma Lazarus. He spoke from a lectern decorated with a foam board carrying the slogan “Making life work for more people”....

Decorated with a foam board... That's like a bird giving birth. The WaPo is bumping up the rhetoric inanely. Even when mocking the GOP for its strained cheeriness, they're goosing us with inappropriate but exciting words.

And then there's that coin. It's moving closer to reality.  Here I am over here in Reality. And there... somewhere out there.... a coin... it approaches!

Words, words, words... What kind of words do you have an appetite for this morning?