When Smart People Dumb Down

Greta von Susteren, Dan Abrams, and Jeff Toobin. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're arguably not the dumbest people on cable news, but they'll play dummies on TV. Check out the quotes in Howard Kurtz's media column, in which all three bemoan the lack of pictures as the reason why they won't be doing as much serious coverage of the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts as they'd really, really like to do.

From the little I've seen of it, the Natalee Holloway coverage doesn't have all that many current pix either -- where do you get current video of a missing person? No, it has endlessly repeated family snaps, just as boring (except for the youthful blondness) as the endlessly repeated "class photos" of the enrobed Supremes.

Toobin, whom I like, says: "It's very difficult to illustrate the concept of separation of powers, or separation of church and state." Anybody who, as I once did, worked as a secondary school social studies teacher has figured out ways to visualize exactly those concepts on the shoestring visual resources of the public schools. I bet somebody at CNN who runs the Harry (no relation) or Paintbox or whatever the latest visual-effects box they use for promos could figure out a neat way to visualize the separation of powers in less time than it takes to, as Greta brags about her Holloway coverage, teach us a lot we didn't know about Aruban law.