Apathy is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language as "lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal.
This week in Los Angeles, it could have easily been defined as the public's response to the live feed of President Barack Obama's speech about public health care.
To put it bluntly, no one cared. And really, why would the general public?
Why would someone who just got off of work rush to a public venue to watch Obama's speech? If a person has even the slightest interest in politics, all he or she has to do is go home and turn on the television or hook up to the Internet (presuming this person has cable and/or Internet connection).
Instead of watching and having to digest everything that was said throughout the 45 minute speech, an interested party could simply flip through the cable channels to his or her preferred bias of news coverage and have the important parts of the speech regurgitated to them.
Or if people were actually interested in politics (or maybe just this topic), they could pull up video of the entire speech on their computer and just watch it in the comforts of their own home after they've unwound a bit from working all day. I would venture to say that most people, after having gotten off work, just aren't interested in being in the public forum and possibly having to listen to and/or debate others about how they feel about the speech, health care, or Obama.
In our current digital era, people do not go out searching for the news. Instead, they let it come to them via cable or the Internet.
I even actually tried to have some small, tincy-wincy, minute inkling of interest for the speech (it was actually pretty difficult) when we were assigned to go out and see what were the thoughts and opinions of people.
But all I found out was that, like me, people in L.A. generally didn't care about the live broadcast.
Upon the suggestion of a professor, I called a couple of churches south of our prestigious university. I was told they might be having a viewing. The response from each...nope...nothing planned.
I thought perhaps a restaurant might be playing the speech, so craving Mexican food, I went to the two closest entries according to the Google Maps application on my Blackberry.
Unfortunately for the assignment, the first, Leonardo's, was closed, and unfortunately for my stomach, it appeared there was no one at the La Barca Restaurant watching the debate.
By this time, the debate had already been on for about 10 minutes and not likely to find anything on my own, I decided to head to the Lab just off of campus where some of my classmates had informed me they would be taking in the debate.
I drove by a couple of churches hoping to see a cluster of cars gathered or a sign mentioning a viewing of the debate, but instead I drove by multiple churches that looked more like secluded, members-only establishments rather than places where a public gathering was taking place.
When I got to the Lab, there were only about 10-15 minutes left of Obama's speech, and though there were approximately 20 or so people in the place, it appeared there was only one non-Annenberger actually watching the debate.
The overall feel of the place: apathy.
Did I merely go to all the wrong places? Did I just not find people because I, myself, am not interested in politics?
According to some of my classmates (see: here, here, here, here, here -- I think you get the point), the answer was a resounding "negative, ghost writer."
Shotgun Spratling
(Photo Source: Flickr user mrmatt under Creative Commons License)
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