Extra helpings of Schadenfreude, please

Until last week, I didn't realize that I was prophetic in writing a John Edwards blog. Of course, I wasn't writing a John Edwards blog; I was just taking issue with the idiocy of the phrase love child as a reasonable 21st century term. But on Friday, the world went nuts over the terrible results of Edwards' terrible judgment in dilly-dallying with a daffy New Age-ish bimbo. I floated over the blogosphere just long enough to note the joyful satisfaction in his doom.

Many were the postings on How Could He? and Cancer! and Elizabeth! and Apologize! and Enough? and Not Enough! But below them all, the oily sheen of delight in another's certain pain was all too evident. Sometimes a screed carried a light frosting of the Women's Movement, or there was the creamy topping of the betrayed populists and, at other times, there was a crunchy sprinkling of the character issue. But it was still the same sweet dessert: that good-hair pretty boy got his, and about time too.

I'm not sure when Schedenfreude became our national past-time, but we're there now, honey. And a poor business it is, keeping us within a dreary circle of either agreeing that John Edwards is a rat, or fighting over his choice of bimbo vs. cancer-ridden wife. Either way, mass-culture cooties are taking up valuable brain space .

So I retired from the fray, as I predictably do when I'm in disagreement with the zietgeist, which is about 90% of the time. I dove into writing a new short story and my client work, which is where I've been these many days.

Despite anything the retro show Mad Men may suggest, the 50's were not a golden age lost. However, it was a time that offered some useful strategies. Just like now, there were seedy goings-on with the famous and infamous alike and, just like now, these doings were published, often with grainy photographs. However, parents and teachers made a distinction between garbage information and okay information. When Lana Turner's daughter stabbed the no-goodnik Johnny Stampanato, this was classified as garbage and thus of no real interest. My mother dampened my desire to gulp up movie mag accounts, saying it would just give me bad dreams.

I think she was onto something. Our gleeful obsession with bad news makes for troubled sleep, and from there bad dreams arise.

Bad dreams and nightmares.