I Know Why Elvis Shot The TV

I don't do it very often. I don't see the point. I'm not even sure why I did it sitting here right now, but I did. Plopped down on the couch, curious about Keith Olbermann - and like any true black hole, I was sucked into a bottomless vortex of vacuity.

And there is something about it... you can't look away.

Liberal media? Please. So invested in taking hostages of eyes, so they can maintain their ad base - because without viewers, they are (literally) nothing, everything goes. Accurate reporting is drowned in the charge to create a don't-blink, there's-something-happening need to pay attention slant that ramps a bit more drama, a closer outcome, an exaggerated sense of the stakes into the equation.

That seems to be the tightrope no one's talking about, the filter that's so clogged with hair that hideous sucking sound becomes so loud and constant we no longer hear it anymore. And just in case you might - not me, I don't really watch, which is what left me paralyzed like someone watching a car wreck - turn away, they're now cortisol twisting at a fever pitch.

Fear, baby. And arrogance. Whew. What a cocktail. I used to think arrogance and ignorance was the most toxic 1-2 combo in modern living. Then... I watched tv. Ever watch "Morning Joe," MSNBC's replacement for the possibly race-baiting/misogynistic or else deeply misunderstood but very misunderstood Don Imus?

It's like watching the worst of an overly entitled single sex prep school 8th grade debate team hanging out. Kids who're so glued to their privileged reality, so dismissive by protesting their superior intellectual and far better information take on the world, that the smugness and (not) cleverness isn't the most egregious sin.

No, save that for the dumb boy interaction with the pretty new girl talking head. That awkward I-like-you-so-much-the-blood-has-left-my- brain-and-I-can-only-torture-you-like-a-5th-grader and am not able to function properly as a mature human being. A man who can't handle his sexual tension that openly isn't someone who should be offering any insight into world events - especially as someone setting the tone for the day.

Equally distressing, his softball take on the very pretty Kelly Preston - and her upcoming Lifetime movie "The Tenth Circle." The film is about a woman who's having an affair and her daughter gets raped at a party while Preston is at an assignation. Mr Scarborough thinks this is the perfect time to both scoff at Lifetime as an estrogen outpost and then admit that he gets hooked on the programming when he deems to sneak-a-peek.

I can not under any circumstance imagine Diane Sawyer feeling so insecure about who she is that she'd need to belittle another delivery system - or a demo of people who may well decide this next election, then turn around and then to create the illusion of intimacy and sensitivity, confess the narcotic effect of women's programming.

This reality makes it only slightly less amazing that somehow something deemed entertainment or satire such as "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," on Comedy Central, with their cynicism, sarcasm and hardcore irony, are probably presenting the most honest take on what's really happening than most of the accredited news media.

Those beauty queen news readers, who just wanted to "mean something" and "make a difference"? You wouldn't take them seriously in a bar talking politics... you'd take them seriously trying to take them home. But those newscasts need your eyes, so they're gonna tantalize you with eye candy.

And the ego-bloated scream-fest hosts, the ones there to stir the pot of "spirited dialogue" in the name of "balanced perspective"? Please. They are more punch drunk on the pseudo-power of creating dog fights that can deconstruct into "Jerry Springer"-esque acrimony that borders on playground tantrum throwing and epithet hurling.

Yet, people not only don't turn away, they consider themselves informed.

Perhaps that's the greatest treason. These viewers, they think they're investing in really knowing the issues, really getting a handle on "the bounce." They think they not only see through the spin, but they understand the nuance and undercurrents.

So, out there on the cul de sacs of America, where the stupor has allowed them to think Iraq was about the Twin Towers not oil, where global warming is something the liberals (read commies who will tax us and give everything away) miss that the tax abatements have made them far more heavily taxed than the rich people who mock them - but that would require doing the math of what each makes against what one pays for a number that truly would leave them speechless.

And many of their neighbors who're too busy figuring out whether the kids can have their own car based on the cost of everything... Maybe even the ones busy volunteering at their church's soup kitchen or thrift store... They don't have the time, so they trust Bud their neighbor down the street, because he's always been so interested in that stuff.

It's about scandal - even Olbermann found himself trapped under the diminutive tonnage of Mini Me Verne Troyer's "sex tape," because his producers knew that was what America was going to be talking about. And you gotta give the people what they want.

Never mind that in the post-10 pm hours on something like MSNBC - the expanded serious news and reporting, politics and issues arm of NBC Network news -- are dedicated to the most salacious. Hour long editions of "To Catch A Perp," documentaries on sex slavery in America, the notion that 1 in a 100 Americans will be incarcerated in "Lock Up,"

They gotcha! But what they don't tell you is everything they're not focusing on. The state of the globe, the real reasons behind the mortgage crisis, what is really happening in Iraq or the Global War on Terrorism.

Yes, the argument could be made that to survive - especially in publically traded times - you have to give the people what they want. But how many parents would give their children all the candy they asked for? Because it is the same thing.

And as a journalist, albeit a music critic, and former publicist, here would be the truth of the challenge. It can all be interesting if you tell it well. It is how the story gets told, revealed, what's there - but it is also how you make it relate to the viewer's own life. It's as simple as: What... Does... It... Mean... To... Me?

At a time when news budgets are being slashed, staffs cut, indeed quality imploding - in part because editors can't keep up with the workload or truly have no sense of what these beats are and hire writers who allow them to feel comfortable, and in part because the arrogance of writers often keeps them from truly seeing beyond their take, as well as being the fawning victims of the wrong kind of familiarity - it is as much what is being served, as saying the people watching it are sheep.

I believe people love their children - and want to leave them a world that isn't going to be appreciatively less than the avaricious, me-mine-more commodity grab that we currently enjoy. The entitlement right now - and there is a suburb near where I live that people laugh about the Christians there who believe that "poverty is a moral failing" from "their churches you can see from space" - is its own form of blindness.

Maybe gas at $5 a gallon will drop the scales from people's eyes... Because this Iraq war -- where the middle class, not merely the privileged, knows no one who is fighting in it -- didn't get them to look deeper. It's not personal. It's about flexing our mighty American might - with people who have no life worth living anyway, so it's an opportunity for them to better themselves.

And MSNBC, they just keep the white noise coming. A blanket of smug pseudo-information - where the weighting isn't based on egregiounesss or power of revelation, but more what feeds the entitlement, the status quo and state of our own arrogant ignorance.

I don't have a firearm. I don't know enough to own one responsibly. Good thing, maybe. Because if I did, like Elvis, long about 3 pm yesterday, I would've most certainly shot my tv.

Comments

[woodsywizz]

It's marvelous that you write this, and your erudition is both clear, and rare. But there is another option; to roll around in the mud in order to understand the pigs [ref: "Animal Farm", George Orwell].

I am not suggesting this for YOU, but I declare that for some of us, to inhabit the milieu of the hoi polloi is to understand the zeitgeist. [OK, that melange was just for fun. But how about Sun Tsu's teaching, to Know Your Enemy.....?]

I feel that Keith Olbermann's high-velocity schtick is intended to counteract, oppose, and contrast itself with the idiot programming of the right. [Have you noticed that FOX on-air personnel are either Botox Beauties or men with Baptist Preacher hair? Amd what's with the constant salacious references, including the recent egregiously disgusting display of the dead body of that poor 'supermodel'?]

I'll agree with you that much of programming is toxic, if you'll start watching the marvelous shows on the History Channel, National Geographic channel, Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet. It's a one-for-one trade. You watch Smart TV, and I'll agree that so-called "news channels" are 90% drek [ref: Sturgeon's Law].

So what do you say. Is it a deal?

Respectfully,

With thanks,

John Carl Harper
San Antonio, TX

[americaforme]

I can identify, enough is enough...Because something works, media squeezes it to death. I dont lay these continuation decisions on the the reporter...Pressure from the top,a serious bad move..The vewer gets saturated, over extended, fed up, and media does'nt have even a clue that they are in deep do do. A good thing isn't a good thing forever. Thanks for your Post.

[SamEllison]

Nice rant Holly but nobody watches, check the ratings.
Only us crazies(I keep CNBC on all day with the sound off)!

[jnhobbs]

Nice post,
You wrote :
Perhaps that's the greatest treason. These viewers, they think they're investing in really knowing the issues, really getting a handle on "the bounce." They think they not only see through the spin, but they understand the nuance and undercurrents.
This is what worries me. There's always the opinion leader in a group of friends or the workplace , the one who is " really interested in that stuff " , and this person is armed with all the convential wisdom of Joe Scarbourogh.
I long for a world where people dig a little deeper. I also wish that I was thin and athletic. Oh well. Thanks for this.

[piratesfriend]

Elvis pulled the trigger over the irritation factor as much as anything.... or so it seems from here.
Certainly, I can imagine having a beef with everything you're talking about, because it's endemic of not just the dumbing -- but numbing down of America.
Sadly...

[tcagle]

I haven't watched the news in decades, since back when it was cancelled.

[duh]

Great column. Thanks.

[BARRISTER]

Elvis was watching Fox News!!!

[RobinSeattle]

Uh, Elvis, who was the product of the Mississippi school system, ranked 50th out of 50 states, didn't shoot his tv because of some angst over the lowbrow nature of the fare the networks were offering at the time. Rather, it was some personal snit he had with Robert Goulet,, who was on the Mike Douglas Show, that provoked Prelsey to assassinate his set. One can only assume, this was fueled by a narcotic cocktail, too.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that half of the population has double figure I.Q.'s and so the intellectual roller derby that passes for political chat shows attracts eyeballs for their heat and not their light. Firing Line, which was conducted in a more genteel way by far rightwing icon William F. Buckley, never got anywhere near the ratings of Sean Hannity. It just wasn't enough of a circus.

So the simple fact is that we are stuck with the fulfillment of H.L. Mencken's proverb that you can't lose money when underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Bush's presidency is only the most extreme manifestation of that and intelligent people just have to put up with it.