The World Cup is three days away, and suddenly everyone is writing, blogging, speaking, filming, and broadcasting about Africa—well, about South Africa, though that hasn’t stopped sweeping generalizations about 53 countries and territories.

Of course, things will calm down—we know this—in a few days, once the media realizes that hosting a World Cup is just another day’s work for Africans. But until then, the noise is relentless.

It is bizarre to quote Bono, cited here before, on the effect of the World Cup on our collective psyche (and mood): “It’s not about politics, or religion, or the economy. It’s not about borders, history, trade, oil, water, gas, mineral rights, human rights, or animal rights. It is not about global warming, global pandemics, globalization, GDP, NATO or Kyoto . . . This is about the one month, every four years, when we all agree on one thing. 32 nations, one world watching. 2010 FIFA World Cup.”

We could try to keep up with long, nuanced, detailed posts, but we have other things to do: day jobs to attend to, matches to watch (especially this one), and, sometimes, small children to put to bed.

But we can do a lot more on the fly in 140 characters.

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