Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The BBC Doesn't Get Me Riled Enough


I think I need the cable news equivalent of Methadone.
I was watching BBC News Hour last night and right in the middle of a well thought out and detailed explanation of why our current behavior in Afghanistan can not bring victory I switched over to Keith Ubermann at MSNBC to catch his 'Worst Persons In the World' segment, and then when he went to commercial, I jumped over to ORiledy at Fox News to see what kind of crap he was spewing to his 1% of America. this of course meant that I missed the astute reasons why we can't win in Afghanistan from the BBC.


Then I remembered something I had read on line recently by Jason Linkins at The Huffington Post.


"...political operatives are constantly tuned in to what's happening on cable news. The result is a really bizarre hothouse scenario in which people are basically watching.. well... nothing, but they're riveted to it. How things "play" on cable news is considered fairly important even though no persuadable voters are watching it. And cable news' hyper-agitated style starts to infect every one's frame of mind, making it extremely difficult for everyone to forget that the networks have huge incentives to massively and systematically overstate the significance of everything that happens."


Linkins referred to the "....constant frantic bleat of cable news..." (read it all)


I am addicted.

What's worse most of the Intra-Beltway-Washington is addicted.

In fact many of these people Left-Center-and Right get many of their facts- insights- and indoctrination from these cable news networks.


I can visualize the little 23 year old Texas chick intern in the Senators office sending the daily text message containing the 10 main points covered by Fox News the day before to her Boss, which of course he then uses and spews back into the "news cycle" as authoritative which it is, because it came from him.


Please dear God help that intern not make any significant typos in her texting.


We are doomed.

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