More than a week after Jill Abramson’s firing as executive of the New York Times, This American Life’s host Ira Glass still hadn’t heard the news.
This is surprising. The story of Abramson’s firing was covered by many media outlets for many, many reasons.
I’ve been reading and listening to news about it all week.
Glass’s response:
I hate reading media news so I actively sort of — I’m not interested in someone getting fired. No disrespect to people that are, but I literally had no idea who she was, or that she got fired until this moment.
I loved this response.
Like Glass, I often wall myself off from certain aspects of the news that I am not interested in.
For example, I know that there was a fight in an elevator recently between two famous people (Beyoncé might have been one of them), but I know nothing else of the incident. I’ve seen plenty of tweets and heard plenty of jokes alluding to the incident, but I have yet to uncover the details of this story, because I just don’t care.
Yesterday, someone questioned my ignorance of this matter.
“Oh, c’mon. You’re telling me you have know idea what happened? You never saw the video?”
I explained that I knew that there was a fight in an elevator between two famous people, and that one may have been Beyoncé, but that was it. Sorry.
In fact, how would I know?
I don’t watch any television news. I acquire all of my news via Twitter and podcasts, clicking and listening to only what headlines interest me.
I haven’t spent time with anyone who has discussed the incident in detail.
I’m not sure if my wife is even aware of this incident. If she is, she hasn’t mentioned it to me.
In order to find out what happened in that elevator, I would have to actively seek out the information.
I chose not to.
I experienced the same inexplicably angry doubt when I told someone that I couldn’t pick a Kardashian out of a lineup if you paid me.
I still can’t.
Unless I watch their TV show (which I’m not sure even exists anymore) or read a People magazine, how would I ever know what any of the Kardashians look like? I’m not even sure why they are so famous, or how many of them there are.
If I wanted to, I could search online for an image of the Kardashian clan and include a photo of them below this text, but like Ira Glass, I don’t waste time on things that don’t interest me. This is not to say that being interested in the Kardashians is a bad thing.
How would I know?
I don’t question or doubt or become inexplicably angry at people who don’t know who George Saunders or Vince Wilfork or Doyle Brunson are. Unless you are interested in literature, football or poker, why would you?
So of course I don’t know who possibly-Beyoncé fought in an elevator last week? Why would I care?
Honestly, why would anyone care about some fight between a possible pop star and someone else (maybe the elevator operator?) in an elevator, but asking a question like that would mean that I am judging people for their personal interests.
I try to only do that in my head.
