Every Sunday night I watch National Geographic Explorer on MSNBC. Last Sunday I was especially excited because the show was mostly dedicated to combat journalism.
Recently I have begun to wonder about this non-stop, around- the-clock journalism. During O.J. it was relentless. Babies in wells, Clinton/Lewinsky, the Florida recount and now “America Strikes Back.”
There have been some low points. Do we all remember when the CBS evening news was renamed the CBS evening anthraxupdate? And what about, just recently, when the so-called partying prince of England got busted lighting up a joint, which prompted CNN to do a 15-minute special on it. But on Sunday night, MSNBC and CNN made themselves into a machine of idiotic tabloid headlines.
The National Geographic show had gotten started, real narrations the frontlines of war when the show was interrupted to bring us a special “Breaking News” report. I thought man, something big must have happened, something must have been bombed. Nope. The president just got a little choked on a pretzel. They talked on and on, saying that the Associated Press had reported this. Finally after a few minutes, they went back to the show.
However, a few minutes later, the baby-faced anchor boy, who probably still cries about the prom on every cigarette break, comes back to tell me that NBC news has confirmed that the president has choked briefly on a pretzel.
This time, they had medical analysts and White House Correspondents telling us that Georgie knew he wasn’t out long “cause when he came to his good ol’ coon dogs were still sittin’ in the same place.”
The next morning a doctor was on pointing to an anatomy chart describing how, when choked, the brain is deprived of oxygen and why we faint.
The only way this could be real news was if this was some sort of specially designed al-Quaida pretzel that expanded when the pylatin of your saliva was added to the salty treat, then rendering you useless as you choked on the floor.
If there was some al-Quaida run Frito Lay factory up in Sandusky, Ohio shelling out Bin Laden’s new evil plan of killing us all on our favorite snack foods, then, and only then would this story have been worth hearing. Bin Laden and his wicked pork rinds running through the Senate, causing every senator to cough violently and beat the crunchy goods from their windpipe.
The salt and vinegar chips would disrupt the House of Representatives like a review of Madonna’s new sex book at a Baptist chastity convention.
I was wondering where this thinking comes from.
Why do people focus on such insubstantial items when there is so much real news on every corner? Is it the fact that we expect news around the clock and when there is none we have to make some out of pretzels and chip dip?
The media cares more about Jon Walker’s trial than they do about the eight million starving Afghan refugees and it’s because of supply and demand. The truth is that we love our O.J.’s, our Tonya Harding’s and we sit around eating pretzels and snack foods trying to figure out what went wrong with our society. We sit there and live vicariously instead going out and doing things. I know that cable news is addictive and I tell you what, if it wasn’t for Ashleigh Banfield or Campbell Brown, I’d stop watching MSNBC altogether.

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