Confessions of a CNN junkie
I’ve been watching this show called “Intervention” on the A&E channel on Monday nights. Have you seen it?
It’s a great show about how families and friends come together to help stop the addictive behaviors of the drug abusers, alcoholics, etc. they love.
I’m watching my back. My time may be coming. You see, I have an addiction of my own. I haven’t seen it on the show. I don’t know if there are any treatment centers in California or Arizona that help with this kind of thing.
But the ugly truth is, I gotta have my CNN.
I admit I wasn’t that bad before the presidential primary season. There was the occasional check-in when a big news story broke, but that was about it.
But somewhere in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, I got hooked. The dizzying highs of the state-by-state projections! The staggering lows of the exit polls! The exhaustive dismantling and analysis of every word spoken by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama (and all those other guys – Huckabee, Edwards and the rest of the peanut gallery) over the last six months.
I’ve loved the Tuesday night coverage of the primaries – the blow-by-blow from Wolf Blitzer, the touch-screen run-down of each state’s voting peculiarities by John King, the sensitive post-mortem by Anderson Cooper.
And how about those guest analysts? Stellar pundits like legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin (who rose to fame during the OJ trials), Donna Brazile (a key figure in the presidential of Bill Clinton and Al Gore) and David Gergen (political analyst and advisor to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton) – all of them hugging those little CNN laptops, crunching numbers and waxing philosophic about this extraordinary election year.
Things got really dicey last Saturday. I cut short a shopping trip, for crying out loud.
Now, I love to shop. I mean, I really love it. When I hit a store, I look at everything. I don’t get hungry, I don’t get thirsty. I can stay on my feet for hours. You could say I’m addicted to shopping … but you won’t. One thing at a time.
Anyway, I was at the Leesburg Kohls off of the 15 bypass, and I was having a good time checking out all the stuff. But I was also checking my watch. It was all well and good to ogle the store’s summer selection, but I needed to get home by 1 p.m. I needed a fix.
You see, Saturday, was the day Hillary Clinton would finally concede to Barack Obama, and suspend her presidential bid. What would she say? How would she say it? Most importantly, what would Wolf think?
Like all addictions, there is a dark side. CNN is on all the time. Filling 24 hours of air time each day – every day – with news and news-like substances means A LOT of repetition, and yes (brace yourselves), a lot of over-analysis. Did Hillary cry on purpose before the New Hampshire primary, or was it a sincere reaction? Is Barack Obama responsible – somehow accountable – for every word spoken by his church’s minister? Is John McCain too old to be president? Regardless of your own views on the subject, one can ask these questions only so many times.
There’s a lot of junk on CNN. A lot of commentators and anchors who don’t seem all that bright … who would rather hear themselves jabber on incessantly than listen to the person they are supposed to be interviewing … who make their own verbal gaffes all the time.
It’s unavoidable – politicians, anchors, business folks – anyone who talks all the time sooner or later is going to say something they shouldn’t. And then it will be broadcast, and re-aired and commented upon and You-Tubed to death. That’s life in these media-saturated United States.
But, like all addictions, there’s an oddly comforting side. CNN is on all the time. Wherever you travel around our great nation, when you land in its airports or eat at its restaurants, CNN can be found on a TV monitor somewhere. If you’re up with a new baby or a sick child, it’s there for you. Even in a noisy bar, you can check in and get an update – just read the crawl at the bottom of the screen. It’s the chatty neighbor who knows what everybody is up to, and it’ll leave a light on for you.
The primary season is over now (sniff). There’s lots of speechifying and photo ops in store for the summer. But the really big stuff is still over the horizon. The conventions in late August and early September! The fall campaign! The (be still my heart) November 4 election! Exit polls!
And for anyone who wants to intervene, I may be able to clear some time November 5.
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