How bad does it have to get? An article on the last page of A section in the Ann Arbor News showed a photo of a crater stretching all the way across a street in Lebanon, maybe 40 feet wide. (Not the photo shown here, but similar.) Above the photo was a secondary headline (continued from the front page): "Fears mounting that violence could spiral out of control."

How many 40 foot wide craters in the middle of streets does it take before you would believe that violence has spiralled out of control?

One of the headlines on Democracy Now on Thursday was "Israel Launches Heaviest Bombing of Lebanon in 24 Years." Other sources wrote or talked about it in similar terms. I guess that explains it. Like Clinton's on-again, off-again bombing campaign in Iraq, it's hardly a major story when Israel bombs Lebanon again. But the heaviest bombing in 24 years, that's news.

Does this mean that the media is jaded, or they know how jaded their audience is, or is it reasonable for us to hear about decades of violence and yawn about it? I've been one of the yawners too. A wise wicked witch of the west once said, "What a world! What a world!"