Pirates! You've Seen the Movie - Now Watch the News!

“It’s Disney’s fault,” Maddie sat down breathlessly.

“What?” Bernard didn’t have a clue what Maddie was talking about.

“The pirates. They’re Disney’s fault,” Maddie asserted with a nod.

“Disney because …? “

“Well, they’ve changed the image of pirates. With Peter Pan, pirates were evil. Nobody liked Captain Hook. Now with that Pirates of the Caribbean movie, they’ve made being a pirate so glamorous. Why wouldn’t those Samoan boys want to be pirates? They all want to be like that French-loving Johnny Depp.”

“That’s actually Somalian pirates,” I said, trying to help.

“4 third-world teenagers with guns and we send the navy after them. This is how much the threat to our way of life has degraded and how desperate the media is for a story and the politicians for a sense of purpose and reason to spend more on defense.” Bernard was disgusted.

“This is a big deal,” I said, touting my newly acquired knowledge about the boat-jacking pirates.

“It is,” Bernard raised his eyebrow skeptically.” Really?” He shook his head and said, “This is the story du jour. It’s a cheap way to sell news. And it leaves us with the question we always get with the media: does it still qualify as focused if we’re focused on distractions?”

“Du jour!” Maddie looked alarmed. “Since when did you decide to be like Johnny Depp?”

Bernard rolled his eyes. I am not sure if he did it out of exasperation or intentionally, but I could have sworn that he uttered a pirate’s ARGH.