Niewws

Wolf Blitzer's CNN Sitaution Room is one of my favorites. First, the name. Then, the content. Each cable network justifiably rips on Fox News for being over the top conservative, but they all have gone tabloid stupid over the last few years, no matter their reporting slant. I think they all should plan some repeat programming... they can not (or choose not) to air programming throughout the day that is newsworthy. For some reason I surfed past the People webpage yesterday. The most viewed story over the past three days was "Brad and Angelina take kids out for ice cream." I kid you not. The cable news networks are not far behind.

Tonight on the Situation Room, Wolf had comedian Lewis Black offering his take on everything political. And that's fine, Lewis is cranky towards just about everything and everyone. But it was part one of two. The rest of interview will be shown tomorrow night. After the segment Wolf told us all to tune in for the second part tomorrow, saying "And guess what... he's just getting started!" Yes!

Why is he on? And in a two-parter on what is supposed to be a news program? Earlier in the day I saw a twenty second interview with a doctor using one BBBBBillion dollars of his own money to develop a new hand-held medical computer to give better feedback and usable information for doctors. He quite literally answered two questions. I learned next to nothing, but I wanted to and I needed to. We need to.

I listened to a podcast earlier today where comedian Mark Maron was talking to fellow comedian Jim Gaffigan. You know Gaffigan from his bit about Hot Pockets. There was talk of said pockets, but the conversation turned into a nerdly breakdown of comedy, modern stand-up and comedians in general. They have different approaches to writing and joke telling, but they both agreed that comedians are just doing their own thing. Some may be political, some may be observational some just clowns. But they are, at heart and ultimately, comedians doing comedy, making people laugh. To put any disproportionate sociopolitical weight on their material is misplaced (ooooh--- big words).

Their discussion brought to mind a book on relationships put out by Janeane Garofalo and Ben Stiller many years ago. I remember on their promotional tour they made the point that since they were celebrities they were qualified to write a book and give advice on relationships. They were kidding... but we've moved past that point somehow. We've gotten lazy. We (the American we) jump lockstep in with comedians and stars and megalomaniacs (read, Limbaugh). There still needs to be a filter through which it all gets flushed. Comedians should make us laugh and they can make us think... but we should still think for ourselves. "That sounds about right" is not good enough. I'm glad that 20 year-olds are getting news more regularly than they did ten years ago, the fact that they get it from Comedy Central might be a small problem. It's sad that they need to watch Stephen Colbert, John Stewart and Chris Rock to get any perspective on the world. The major news outlets don't leave them much choice.

After reading what I've just written, I am officially an old (possibly cranky) man and October Happy Month clearly needed a day off.

Happy.