The Banality of CNN

For nearly two weeks now, have been glued to world-wide tee-vee news. Most of the focus has been on events in the Middle East, as it should be.

But CNN? When the headlines come up, the anchors whine a lot... Because the Israelis won't let their journalist into Gaza. And they end up using footage that is coming out of there by journalists from Al Jazeera, somewhat sanitized.

As to Al Jazerra, English channel. Ok, they have a slant. BUT. They interview people from all sides of the conflict/war, and let them give their standpoints without interrupting. It can be very educational, letting people have their say. The moderators and journalists are mostly Brits. And they can be very tough whenever they get vague answers to mostly very tough questions they pose... My absolute favorite reporter is this guy named Aymon who is always in a flak jacket and helmet, and gives live reports from the roof of a building on the edge of Gaza City. It helps that he is very attractive, of course, but he seems to have his finger on the pulse of what is going on, and what people think and are experiencing...

Leaving aside the lower intestinal acrobat Wolf Blitzer, who has made me barf for the past decade or so with his sliming toady act, and has nothing to do with real reporting, let us take a really good look at Larry King Live this week. What has he had for subjects and people over the last few days? What is holding the Murkin public in thrall? It can leave you spitless.

Since I began counting.... Ok, 'Are UFO's REAL?' With some nutty physicists. (I believe I saw one in the late Sixties, and it was intriguing, and I know what I saw... but I went on with my life... So what? Whatever it was never attacked us. We were probably too unevolved to be interesting to them...)

Then came a full hour on the Travolta family's tragedy. There is a branch of journalism that is called 'Leichenfledderei' here. Stripping corpses. But there they were out in full force, drilling the coronor, the mayors of that place in the Bahamas, and Ocala Florida, Anybody who could be tangentially 'in the know'. That is when Peter piped up with, 'Why doesn't he address what is HAPPENING in the world right now?' For the first time... But no, they wanted to find some iggy dark sneakret in the Travoltas' lives and make them somehow culpable. And oh YES, the Scientology aspect. Whoo, boy, knocked my socks off.... NOT... We both found that one absolutely disgusting.

Then a full hour about Oprah Winfrey's weight problems, with commentary from her spiritual advisor, her personal trainer, her personal psychologist all bloviating-----about nothing. Poor woman, so successful, and sooooo unhappy. Ok...

Today we got a so-called bishop of a megachurch in Dallas. T. D. something or other. And just when he was asked about the Warren thing, my cell phone rang and I missed his answer. Probably to the good, I'd have had a fucking stroke. Then a segment on the ongoing Kaylee thing in Florida... murdered three year old... The state prosecutor is shrill. Peter complained about the tone of her voice. I opined that if someone's voice goes into that range, they are lying. And THEN.... a new case, missing young white boy who disappeared from his adoptive family ten years ago, and was only reported to the police NOW.

I have going on for years about how that channel got gutted and concentrates on sensationalism, and after Turner sold it, it morphed into some sort of Big Brother, keep the folks calm mode. One of my pet peeves is that they began concentrating on stupid stories specialising in missing WHITE women, perverse murders of small children, and so on. But the beginning of the end in my eyes was the OJ Simpson trial. There was so much else going on in the world, but it was OJ all of the time. I have read reports that the CIA had experts down in the main studio in Atlanta. They probably gave everyone lessons in psych-ops, and how to keep people complacent, just a conjecture...

What they are now doing is evil.

Tomorrow, (today, your time) OLD Larry is gonna have a helluva time interviewing Priscilla Presley, because Elvis would have been 75 tomorrow our time, and is gonna show stuff his fans have never seen. Which gave me a little shock... So what is she gonna show us, huh? The jock strap he wore to swim in? The vibrator he gave her for their fifth anniversary, with the original batteries intact? I do NOT want to know....

And I apologise for the tasteless sarcasm, but it falls in the category 'Leichenfledderei'.

So, Preciousses.... Is that all you want to know as the world is near to blowing up once again?

I used to admire Larry King. He interviewed heads of state in a way that made you feel you knew what made them tick.... Now? Either he is retrained from his producers, or he doesn't get it, or he is so 'inside the beltway' he still wants to be a STAR nowadays. The latter is pathetic.