Thursday, February 22, 2007

Decline of Western Civilization--Part VI, or the decomposing Ms. Smith—UPDATED


We interrupt this newscast for a Fox exclusive: Anne Nicole Smith’s body is decomposing and Cheney blames Hillary--If you, like me, have been appalled at the coverage of Ms Smith’s untimely departure from celebrity and life, and wondered what would happen if one of the 24-hour news networks broke ranks and actually covered actual news, I have bad news for you

CNN, which has become less and less relevant in the U.S. in recent years with its slide into junk news, decided to cover the news (there is a war going on, there is another war being planned and the country is going to hell) with an exclusive interview with Condi Rice, while Fox and MSNBC stuck with the decomposing Ms Smith and the totally hilarious court case over who gets the increasingly offensive body. CNN got clobbered. In the afternoon cycle both MSNBC and Fox creamed them, with CNN getting a third of the ratings of the other two. See here. MSNBC even killed two news shows to continue covering the hearing. Unfortunately, they don’t do IQ tests on the audience and advertisers don’t seem to care if the famous youth age group they find so attractive can chew gum and masturbate at the same time.

If you get bored with Ms. Smith [that's her Houston police mug shot up there--I have no idea why she was arrested, being actively irrelevant is not a criminal offense], there is always Ms Spears. She shaved her head and went into therapy. Oh, and the Sunni insurgency is now using poison gas in Iraq

This is not a serious country. The Romans in the 3rd century are the closet match I can think of. Unlike the Romans, however, we are not going to be invaded by barbarians. We are going to become barbarians.

UPDATE—No, Ms. Smith is still decomposing. But on Saturday, the esteemed New York Times printed a half dozen letters defending all the folks who turned on cable to catch the latest contretemps over the corpse. The message was that the world is such a mess, and the country is such a mess, and there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about it since the government is not responding, we are entitled to a break to worry about something unimportant and to be amused at the people who think it is important. Nonsense.

BULLETIN--Anna Nichole Smith is still dead.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Years ago, I read a great essay about why most political commentary focuses on personalities and trivia. It's what most people understand, or at least think they do, they don't understand economics, foreign affairs or how complex societies work. Anyway, understanding Iraq might only lead to the conclusion that it's unfixable, so probably best to act as if it isn't happening.

Joel Shurkin said...

There is a lot of that going around. But I still need to think about the cult of the celebrity. They only thing this woman had going for her were surgically enhanced boobs.

j