de zengotita

...when you hear statistics about AIDS in Africa for the 349th time, or see your 927th picture of a weeping fireman or an oil-drenched seabird, you can’t help but become fundamentally indifferent - unless it happens to be “your issue,” of course, one you “identify with,” a social responsibility option you have chosen. Otherwise, you glide on, you have to, because you are exposed to things like this all the time. All the time. Over breakfast. In the waiting room. Driving to work. At the checkout counter. All the time. (Thomas de Zengotita, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, pp. 23-24)