When boredom is healthy

Today Krugman blogs that he cannot "muster" a "sense of shock" about the behavior of the Republicans in the health care debate, writing: "I think it is important to realize that the current behavior over health care is nothing new — in fact, it’s been this way for a very long time."

That's pretty much how I have felt all month long.  "Predictably, the opposition's tactics in the health care muddle are getting ugly..." I began a post last week entitled "Barbarians Worthy of a Yawn."   

However, under the circumstances, to express "shock" is not just  -- as Krugman suggests -- an indication that you must have been asleep for most of the past decade.   I think expressions of "shock" help to give life to an industry-contrived script.  For a journalist to express amazement at the sound and fury made by health-care opponents is to play out the very role consigned for you by a corporate PR agency.

But if you witness Americans acting out yet another corporate-financed story-line and choose to be truly and utterly bored at the spectacle? That is to begin a new script.