When I Was Young I Had To Hike TWENTY MILES IN THE SNOW To Watch That Seventies Show

Pity the poor senior writers at Time Magazine, behind the curve in so many ways, and moreover subjected to a curious editorial edict that compels them to frame every lead story according to the following formula:

"It's [insert timestamp] and [insert male first name] and [insert female first name] [insert vaguely ethnic but still pronounceable last name] are [insert banal domestic activity, soon to be infused with subtext of terror!]"

This week's cover story is about the dangers of electronic multitasking and the irreparable harm it is doing to that holiest of institutions, the heterosexual nuclear family. It buries its lede somewhere on page 3: Every generation of adults sees new technology--and the social changes it stirs--as a threat to the rightful order of things.

The problem, according to Time Magazine, is that families aren't sitting on the couch and watching That Seventies Show together anymore.

Families are sitting on the couch, watching That Seventies Show, while their offspring are IM-ing!

(Possibly the offspring are IM-ing because they're not particularly interested in That Seventies Show, a hypothesis that does not seem to have occurred to either Time Magazine's senior writers or any of the social scientists they interviewed.)

I will give them a leetle bit of credit: the interactive ad I had to sit through in order to access the story online was not brought to me by Shire Co., the manufacturer of Adderall (that fine ADD/ADHD medication) but rather by I-Tunes, one of the more prominent bidders in the ongoing attention war.

One can but be thankful for life's little ironies: often, they're the only laughs in town.