Friday, September 02, 2005
The Great Depression
Depressing morning here, and not just because I once again missed Kelly Clarkson's screechtastic performance on the VMAs despite sitting through nearly all of Diddy's Hooked-on-Phonics hosting. No, I've been watching hurricane coverage most of the day, which has left me not only horrified by the immensity of the disaster but also shocked (if not exactly surprised) by the inaptitude of our media. I've seen the folks at FOX News struggling desperately to inject some sort of political spin into an act of God, and reporters from CNN giving all-important information on the status of their hotels. (MSNBC, meanwhile, resembles something they'd put together for the video announcements at Grover Cleveland Middle School.) Is there no story so important that the media can't make it all about the media? I can see it now: Jesus Returns to Walk Among Us; Larry King's Reaction at 9.
So I flipped around a bit, hoping to find something to lift my mood a little. But the Dawson's Creeks on TBS were from the depressing era when Andi left town (for the first time, before she cheated on the PSATs and gave Jen ecstasy) and Dawson and Joey were stomach-churningly happy, and the US Open match was between Joe Noname and Sergei Neverevenheardofhim, so the prospects were not looking good. I considered a Step By Step, but I couldn't in good conscience support the acting career of Patrick Duffy, so I flipped over to VH1, home of Omarosa/Janice catfights and D-list celebrities trying fruitlessly to loose weight. And what did I find there? A documentary about AIDS in Africa. So I've spent about the past hour as an emotional wreck, watching Ashley Judd try to convince sex workers in Madagascar (in fluent French, no less) to use condoms and india.arie singing traditional songs with dying orphans in Kenya. No, I'm not kidding, dying orphans. This world isn't nearly as pretty as it looks on Seventh Heaven, you know that?
All right, I think I'm going to go make a donation to the Red Cross or something. Somehow just making snarky comments about Jessica Simpson just doesn't seem that important any more. Okay, so it's important, but there are other things in life as well...
Depressing morning here, and not just because I once again missed Kelly Clarkson's screechtastic performance on the VMAs despite sitting through nearly all of Diddy's Hooked-on-Phonics hosting. No, I've been watching hurricane coverage most of the day, which has left me not only horrified by the immensity of the disaster but also shocked (if not exactly surprised) by the inaptitude of our media. I've seen the folks at FOX News struggling desperately to inject some sort of political spin into an act of God, and reporters from CNN giving all-important information on the status of their hotels. (MSNBC, meanwhile, resembles something they'd put together for the video announcements at Grover Cleveland Middle School.) Is there no story so important that the media can't make it all about the media? I can see it now: Jesus Returns to Walk Among Us; Larry King's Reaction at 9.
So I flipped around a bit, hoping to find something to lift my mood a little. But the Dawson's Creeks on TBS were from the depressing era when Andi left town (for the first time, before she cheated on the PSATs and gave Jen ecstasy) and Dawson and Joey were stomach-churningly happy, and the US Open match was between Joe Noname and Sergei Neverevenheardofhim, so the prospects were not looking good. I considered a Step By Step, but I couldn't in good conscience support the acting career of Patrick Duffy, so I flipped over to VH1, home of Omarosa/Janice catfights and D-list celebrities trying fruitlessly to loose weight. And what did I find there? A documentary about AIDS in Africa. So I've spent about the past hour as an emotional wreck, watching Ashley Judd try to convince sex workers in Madagascar (in fluent French, no less) to use condoms and india.arie singing traditional songs with dying orphans in Kenya. No, I'm not kidding, dying orphans. This world isn't nearly as pretty as it looks on Seventh Heaven, you know that?
All right, I think I'm going to go make a donation to the Red Cross or something. Somehow just making snarky comments about Jessica Simpson just doesn't seem that important any more. Okay, so it's important, but there are other things in life as well...
