That was Ilario Pantano’s metaphor for the public’s attempt to deal with massive amounts of information about the War on Terror that flow into households every day.

Pantano was a John Locke Foundation Headliner speaker today in Wilmington. Among his comments were his concerns about the media’s influence in the war’s outcome. But he didn’t focus on a perceived media bias. (Click here to watch a video clip of the quote transcribed below.)

I’m suggesting it was about the volume of media. I’m suggesting that it didn’t matter if you think something is vanilla or strawberry. We’re all sophisticated enough consumers of media to know where we go to get the source that tells us what we want to hear.

I’m saying it’s the volume of media — it’s the volume that when you go to your AOL splash page and you see an image of a destroyed building in Lebanon and a man hanging from a ceiling fan and you’re going to check your e-mail that morning, or your 15-year-old is — that’s unsettling.

I’m saying that when it’s on your cell phone alert, when it’s on your car, when it’s 500 channels in a 24/7 cable universe, we are exposed to a volume of media. It’s like a wave. We’re trying to sip a wave through a straw. We don’t have the bandwidth as human beings to handle that.

Now it’s one thing when it’s commercial advertising, and we’re able to shut it out. But when we start shutting out war, and it’s a necessity to preserve our society, we imperil ourselves.

Because of his concerns, Pantano said this speech marks his last public event promoting his recent book Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy. If you missed the speech, you’ll have a chance to watch it on an upcoming edition of Book TV on C-SPAN2.