STFU
For those not in the know, that means "shut the fuck up". I direct that at Hannah Storm and all the other "newspeople" who are spending today and probably days to come yammering about the dead miners in West Virginia and asking their poor families "how it feels".
I was overjoyed last night to find that the Daily Show was back from hiatus. After reruns Monday and Tuesday, I figured they were going to be off till next week, which was very depressing. But lo and behold, there was Jon with a new episode, and right off the bat, he managed to crystallize my feelings in a totally spot-on and still funny way. He made a few awkward comments about how tragic the whole thing is, which is understandable because only an asshole could be glib about something that awful, and then he mentioned how the 24-hour news networks had spent two days covering the event with virtually no information to convey, and then told them to either "stop it" or "leave them alone", "them" being the families. Sorry I can't remember his exact words, but he said something like "what are you going to do, ask them how it feels?"
Sure enough, happened to see a bit of the Early Show on CBS this morning, and there was Hannah Storm asking the wife of one of the miners "how does it feel"? How fucking obnoxious can they be?? What possible purpose does it serve for them to be asking those types of questions? Is it enriching the public knowledge? Is it making the families feel better to rehash the same awful memories over and over for each network? The answer to those questions is no--anyone who disagrees is a douchebag. Sorry, but that's what I think.
I tend to forget how truly repulsive the "news" has become. I really don't watch much anymore. Didn't used to be that way. When I was in junior high, I would get up early just so I could watch the 6AM NBC news. I used to like catching the evening news with Brokaw or Jennings, but then they stopped covering news and started focusing on where my money was being stolen or what was going to kill me. I've turned to MSNBC or CNN during the big events--following 9/11, during the start of the Iraq war, the hurricanes this year--but each time I see more and more how pointless and masturbatory their "coverage" has become. We may have live feeds from everywhere and immediate coverage, but we have no journalism. The Daily Show did a wicked montage of their coverage of that shooting at the Miami airport a few weeks ago where they basically spent hours showing external footage of the plane and telling everyone that nobody really knew what happened. Really? Then get off the air!! More time is spent describing how we don't know what's going on, or guessing or theorizing, than is spent reporting the actual story.
I try to read the Sunday NY Times each week to see what's big or interesting, and I usually read MSNBC's site during lunch, and the CNN site in the john (love my Treo), and that's about it. The rest is all a waste of time. Just really disgusting.
I was overjoyed last night to find that the Daily Show was back from hiatus. After reruns Monday and Tuesday, I figured they were going to be off till next week, which was very depressing. But lo and behold, there was Jon with a new episode, and right off the bat, he managed to crystallize my feelings in a totally spot-on and still funny way. He made a few awkward comments about how tragic the whole thing is, which is understandable because only an asshole could be glib about something that awful, and then he mentioned how the 24-hour news networks had spent two days covering the event with virtually no information to convey, and then told them to either "stop it" or "leave them alone", "them" being the families. Sorry I can't remember his exact words, but he said something like "what are you going to do, ask them how it feels?"
Sure enough, happened to see a bit of the Early Show on CBS this morning, and there was Hannah Storm asking the wife of one of the miners "how does it feel"? How fucking obnoxious can they be?? What possible purpose does it serve for them to be asking those types of questions? Is it enriching the public knowledge? Is it making the families feel better to rehash the same awful memories over and over for each network? The answer to those questions is no--anyone who disagrees is a douchebag. Sorry, but that's what I think.
I tend to forget how truly repulsive the "news" has become. I really don't watch much anymore. Didn't used to be that way. When I was in junior high, I would get up early just so I could watch the 6AM NBC news. I used to like catching the evening news with Brokaw or Jennings, but then they stopped covering news and started focusing on where my money was being stolen or what was going to kill me. I've turned to MSNBC or CNN during the big events--following 9/11, during the start of the Iraq war, the hurricanes this year--but each time I see more and more how pointless and masturbatory their "coverage" has become. We may have live feeds from everywhere and immediate coverage, but we have no journalism. The Daily Show did a wicked montage of their coverage of that shooting at the Miami airport a few weeks ago where they basically spent hours showing external footage of the plane and telling everyone that nobody really knew what happened. Really? Then get off the air!! More time is spent describing how we don't know what's going on, or guessing or theorizing, than is spent reporting the actual story.
I try to read the Sunday NY Times each week to see what's big or interesting, and I usually read MSNBC's site during lunch, and the CNN site in the john (love my Treo), and that's about it. The rest is all a waste of time. Just really disgusting.
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