Tuesday, June 14, 2005

I live in a bubble

Caught about 10 minutes of CNN last night before going to bed, and realized the extent of my ignorance about what's going on in cable news. Between NPR, Air America, and the newspapers, I almost never catch TV news (except Nightline) not because I'm snobby but because it's not so convenient to my schedule. Last time I thought about Aaron Brown he had moved from Nightline to CNN, where he anchored 9/11 and post-9/11 coverage with appropriate gravity.

When I saw him last night, he was bloviating about the Michael Jackson trial and ended his program by soberly noting that now was a time to reflect on the criminal justice system. As the kids say, "WTF?" He wasn't even being sarcastic. The Michael Jackson trial was about as representative of the criminal justice system as The Brady Bunch was representative of the sorrows of widowhood. I visit Media Matters and know all the grousing with what's happened at cable news. Still, when seeing a few minutes of Jackson coverage last night, I felt like I'd been beamed in from another country.

Also, Six Feet Under seemed pretty good last night. Maybe my earlier takedown was premature.

No comments: