From the NY Times:
Change the Channel
By BOB HERBERT

Saddam is now a staple of the Leno and Letterman shows.

And Paris Hilton outgunned President Bush in a prime-time shootout between Fox and ABC.

And we're already choosing up sides on Kobe's and Jacko's guilt or innocence.

We really are amusing ourselves to death, as Neil Postman pointed out a couple of decades ago. He might as well have been speaking into the void. It's only gotten worse.

Americans are the best-informed people in the history of the world. But we are experts at distancing ourselves from any real unpleasantness. Most of us behave as though we bear no personal responsibility for the deep human suffering all around us, and no obligation to try and alleviate it.

Paris, Jacko, Saddam. The world is like one big media show, a made-for-TV spectacular. We can change the channel if things get too ugly. Or just turn the television off. Genuine social consciousness is for squares.

Example: The nation's at war. Is there any reason to share in the sacrifices wars usually require? Nah. The grunts can do the fighting and the dying. And we can put the costs on a credit card. Future generations will pay for it.

And here at home? The headlines tell us things are pretty good. The economy's turned around and the president's poll numbers are up. Let's head for the mall.

The problem is, if you peel away the headlines and look more closely at reality, you'll see some things that aren't so amusing. In New York City, which is just now emerging from the recession, there are more homeless people than at any time since accurate records started being kept in the late 1970's.

Each night more than 39,000 people — nearly 17,000 of them children — seek refuge in the city's shelters. "It's the greatest number of homeless since the Great Depression," said Patrick Markee, a policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless.

The faces of the destitute are changing as more and more families with children — in New York and across the nation — find themselves without the money necessary for food or shelter.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report yesterday showing that over the past year hunger and homelessness continued to rise in major American cities. A survey of 25 cities showed an increase of 17 percent in requests for emergency food assistance and an increase of 13 percent in requests for emergency shelter.

A surge in the Dow is big news. Surges in hunger and homelessness are not.

A broader look at the levels of serious distress being faced by increasing numbers of Americans comes from the latest Index of Social Health, which is published annually by the Institute for Innovation in Social Policy at the Fordham University Graduate Center in Tarrytown, N.Y.

The institute analyzes government statistics in a wide variety of areas, including infant mortality, children in poverty, teenage suicide, health insurance coverage and homicide rates, as a way of monitoring the "social well-being of the nation."

The latest index, which covered the year 2001 (the latest year for which complete statistics were available), showed the social health of the nation taking a steep dive. It was the biggest decline in the index in two decades. And preliminary data for the years since 2001 show the decline continuing, according to Dr. Marc Miringoff, the institute's director.

The categories that worsened in the latest index were children in poverty, child abuse, average weekly earnings, affordable housing, health insurance coverage, food stamp coverage, the gap between rich and poor, and out-of-pocket health costs for those over 65.

Two indicators reached their worst levels on record, food stamp coverage (which correlates with increases in hunger) and income inequality.

"These numbers are usually invisible to us," said Dr. Miringoff. "They tell us an untold story, not just about the poor but the working poor and the middle class as well. It's shocking to see such a sharp decline in just one year. It tells us that something's going on with the basic fabric of our society."

We might actually pay attention to problems like hunger, homelessness, housing and health costs, if only we could find a way to make them amusing.