Let’s have a quick look at the important events of the day.

Grunty baby polar bear learns to crawl (CNN)

Mayor guilty of dog-napping? Vote for weirdest story (MSNBC)

Firm offers ‘heartache leave’

A company gives workers one to three paid days off after a bad break-up (Yahoo)

11-Year-Old Boy Deaf for Nine Years Suddenly Cured (Fox News)

New Jersey Cop Tickets Fellow Officers Last Day on Job (Fox News)

Jury to Be Picked for Mom Accused of Microwaving Baby (Fox News)

There. Informed?

But wait. If you were expecting a load of solemn head-shaking and grave tsk-tsking over our degenerate times, you are being spared. A century ago, Alfred Harmsworth, later elevated to the peerage as Lord Northcliffe, bestrode the London newspaper scene like a colossus. Here is how Piers Brendon describes the means of his success in Eminent Edwardians:

“Northcliffe’s success was largely built on his receptiveness to, and his mirroring of, public opinion. He was always reluctant to insult his readers gratuitously by telling them what they did not want to know. [emphasis added]. They did want to know about hats — ‘Terrors of Top Hat Wearing’ was a favoured early headline — and about skirts — ‘The Battle of the Skirts: Long v. Short’: ‘What a great talking point,’ said Northcliffe. They wanted to know about first-class murder and highly-spiced scandals, decorously presented, of course — Northcliffe’s private sexual habits may have resembled Mussolini’s but his public attitudes, like those of most Edwardians, were products of the fertile union between Mr Podsnap and Mrs Grundy. They wanted to know about baby-farming and ill-health, about sport and money, about rumours of war and royalty, about scientific marvels and strange things found in tunnels. In short, they wanted entertainment disguised as information. [emphasis added]”

Or, as a somewhat earlier analysis concluded, “All things are wearisome; no man can speak of them all. Is not the eye surfeited with seeing, and the ear sated with hearing? What has happened will happen again, and what has been done will be done again, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look, this is new’? No, it has already existed, long ago before our time. The men of old are not remembered, and those who follow will not be remembered by those who follow them.” [Ecclesiastes 1:8-11]