March Madness and The Distracted North American Male

It's that time of year again when millions of American males--and not a few females--from President Obama on down fill out their NCAA Men's Basketball Tourney brackets.  But many of us spend hours every week or even every day year round watching or listening to sports--or even watching or listening to men talk about sports on radio or television or keeping up on twitter feeds, web sites, and so on.

Imagine going back in time to the American Revolution and telling Benjamin Franklin that in some 240 years men would have vastly improved educations, easy access to the most important books, and hours of leisure time to study government, serve civic organizations, even learn Latin.  Then imagine America's original self-made man transported to the present to find millions and millions of American males unable to name their U.S. Senators or figure out if the right to bear arms is part of the Constitution or the Ten Commandments--but fully informed on the statistics and health of Duke's back-up point guard.

Are our working lives so difficult that the rest of our waking hours must be largely devoted to such trivia, this at a time when the need for an engaged citizenry is so acute?