I had a dentist's appointment this morning, and while I was getting my teeth cleaned they had a TV in the corner of the room tuned to a morning news show. It had been quite a while since I've looked in on any of the morning news shows, so this seemed okay to me.
In addition to the occasion genuinely helpful weather update, I also saw: a lengthy interview with Vanilla Ice about home repair, lingerie models, a "guess the celebrity" photo contest, how to make a pizza with soy faux mozzarella, Tom Brady in a Michigan State t-shirt, some video showing that strokes are really bad, and a midget playing badminton. No, I did not make up that final item. In fact, they played that clip several times.
What I did not see was any actual news.
I feel like I lost about 20 IQ points.
I don't want to seem all media-elite here, and I don't think the morning news shows need to be Hunter-Brinkley or McNeil-Lehrer. But, um, wow.
Sure, that last brief sentence may not seem all that expressive, but what do you want from a guy who watched 30 minutes of television "news" this morning?
On the bright side, my teeth are all clean, shiny, and cavity free! So I've got that going for me.
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Having that "pleasure" on which you report much more frequently, owning to age alone, no initiative involved, I didn't think it was news that news shows show none in the a.m. But your story was very funny.
ReplyDeleteIn defense of infotainment, various metal items were scraping my teeth and poking my gums. So I may have missed something newsy. And now that I think about it, there may have been a blurb promising more information on the rescue of the Chilean miners. So even though they didn't show any news while I was watching, they promised to show some news-like video at some point in the future, which puts them a leg up on the so called cable "news" networks.
ReplyDeleteWhat amazes me in all of this is the contempt that I've developed for what passes itself off as "television news" these days. I used to like and watch television news. You know, back when it contained occasional nuggets of actual news.
The really sad part about tv news is that what is actually presented as real news isn't pure news, but instead is a very small amount of news embellished with a large amount of opinion.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost impossible to find a presentation of the facts without a heaping side potion of spin masquerading as "analysis."
For real news I watch BBC America, its empty of spin and I hear things about other parts of the world American media doesn't have time for since Lohan and others like her suck up all the oxygen.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I don't protest very much about lingerie models.
Yeah! Coming back to the blogosphere after a month and some's absence who do I find? My favorite: Mr Crankypants! Boy, rereading the list of news items you saw up there, my first thought was: Wow! How long did it take to clean his teeth? He got to see lots of different and wonderous blurbs! It reminds me of a scene from Woody Allen's "Hanah and her Sisters" from the 80s. At one point a very intellectual character watches late night TV and says "You see the whole culture" then goes on to list something very like your morning news show. He ends up saying "Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling?!" Now the only difference is it's moved from late night to morning TV!
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