Decades ago a marketing professor told a company that he’d developed a formulae that said for x amount of advertising money you got y amount of sales regardless of the product. He said that to test the theory he’d sell rocks. Google Pet Rock. It was a success and the results exactly followed his formulae.
I think the same is true of outrage. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is. Suppose a company, any company, runs out of toilet paper in the women’s bathroom. With sufficient x “advertising” (news coverage) they’d probably be driven out of business or at least forced to put out large sums of money.
Outrage is a function of coverage. One comment from the president along the lines of, “of course the police acted stupidly,” or, “he could have been my son,” is worth all the x you’d otherwise have to invest.
We live in interesting times.
From Pope Benedict, Caritas in Veritate, #75: “What is astonishing is the arbitrary and selective determination of what to put forward today as worthy of respect. Insignificant matters are considered shocking, yet unprecedented injustices seem to be widely tolerated.”