NEW YORK (AP) — Are we having a national conversation yet?Can we even settle on what the subject should be?

Events this month have sure given us plenty to talk about, and we’ve been talking up a storm. But to what purpose, other than to satisfy our need to put our overflow of feelings into words?

Meanwhile, the media have done their part to assist us. For instance, they were right there after last week’s massacre at Virginia Tech, busy echoing and egging on our horror, sorrow and alarm.

And our shock. The news of 32 students and teachers executed by a madman on a peaceful college campus — that was shocking, all right. But at the same time, the story somehow lacked the element of surprise. It felt chillingly familiar, especially as the coverage unfolded in time-honoured style: human tragedy packaged as spectacle.

Another predictable occurrence: The killer releasing a posthumous press kit.

And yet another non-surprise: The way NBC, to whom Seung-Hui Cho mailed his ghoulish “multimedia manifesto,” returned the favour with generous on-air exposure (as did other news organisations with which NBC shared the material).

Debate raged, of course, as to whether publicising Cho’s video testimonials, fierce self-portraits and typed-out rantings might offer a telling glimpse into his twisted psyche — or instead give an attention-seeking psycho the global forum he claimed for himself, even from the grave.

NBC News’ most persuasive — and at the same time most disheartening — justification was this: The material would have likely reached the public’s eyes and ears anyway, after somehow being leaked to an unsanctioned outlet.

So this is what it’s come to: If NBC didn’t put out this stuff, TMZ.com or YouTube (or some renegade purveyor no one’s even heard of yet) would.

That explanation only underscores the current state of information dispersal: It’s anybody’s game. It’s beyond anybody’s control.

It also underscores the irony of Don Imus’ recent downfall.

As a leading shock jock, Imus had long been richly paid to say outrageous things on the air. Then, early this month, he said something everybody agreed was too outrageous: his racist wisecrack about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. After public outcry, sponsor defections and media coverage fanning the whole uproar, he was fired.

Imus’ exodus seemed the perfect time for a penetrating, much-overdue examination by the media and their audience alike, something hopefully envisioned as “a national conversation on race”. There has been no such conversation, while, in Imus’ absence, the cultural landscape promises to stay about as raunchy as he left it.

Rightly or wrongly, Imus was made an example of. But there’s no such quick fix to the ills that brought him down. Anyone who feels a genuine concern for the media’s transgressions need not count on any simple remedies for what Imus’ former boss, CBS head Leslie Moonves, termed “a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people.”

For one reason, CBS (like umpteen other media companies) cashes in on this culture.

Besides, even if the mainstream media were to answer the plea of civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson “to detoxify the airwaves,” these major media provide just a portion of the images and speech available to viewers. On the one hand, it’s a blessing for the media consumer: dozens of TV channels and countless websites.

But this quantity and surge is growing into a tyranny of excess. The information torrent is swamping us with fire-hose force. It’s a flood of information reminiscent of the cartoon “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, where brooms toting pails of water multiply into more and more delivery systems, with the waterline rising higher by the moment.

Savvy media consumers know to stay alert to the threat of information being kept from them by government and other power brokers. But the opposite phenomenon — tidal waves of information that distract and overwhelm us — has become a growing threat of its own.

In this environment, how can a nation of citizens isolate the crucial issues that confound them, then focus on those problems long enough to identify common ground?

The shootings at Virginia Tech drowned out a national conversation about race before it could begin.

Now, for a moment, we are poised to have a conversation about gun violence, supplemented by discussion about violence in the media.

Don’t bet on it happening. Rushed along by a torrent of new events and information, the subject will be hastily changed to the next thing, while we await the next eruption. Then we’ll follow the news coverage, talk about our feelings, and maybe find a scapegoat to pin the blame on. But there’ll be no time or space for a thoughtful conversation.