We don’t have cable anymore at my house, or satellite TV. The reason: my kids. They would turn on the television and watch Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Drake and Josh, Zoey 101 and all the rest for hours and hours and days upon days on end. One day when I asked my youngest to turn off the TV, she said, “But Daddy, I’ve only seen this one eight times!”
It all came crashing down the night that Don Imus met with the Rutgers ladies’ basketball team to apologize, and FOX News showed a live shot of the Governor’s Mansion in New Jersey for about three hours, even though there was no press conference called: “…FOX NEWS ALERT – We are looking LIVE at the site of the meeting between radio personality Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team. We will update you when developments are available.”
My wife and I watched most of the three hours, complaining all the way about how silly it was to have a live remote from a location where the chances of any further developments occurring were slim or none. As the blood starting oozing from my eyes and ears, I remember asking the profound question, “Hey! Isn’t that the place where the gay governor used to live?” So, no more cable. No more Monday Night Football, no more Animal Planet, and no more Disney Channel. I believe we now have more TVs in the house than channels. I miss cable. Oh, well, there’s always the Internet.
The 24-hour news and information cycle has gone amok. I firmly believe there is about six minutes of hard news each day, with the rest of the time being filled up with junk, repeated and repeated because folks cannot get enough of it.
Britney Spears loses her sanity, her kids, her panties, her husband, her self-respect, and still there are hundreds of people who make a living following her around, waiting for the next train wreck. Paris Hilton goes to Hyde, goes to an awards show, goes to jail, gets out of jail, goes back to jail, gets out of jail, and gets her hair done.
Lindsey Lohan smacks up her car, goes to rehab, gets out of rehab, smacks up her car, goes back to rehab, gets back out of rehab, and then decides to spend quality time with her father, an alcohol abusing ex-con. Then we turn on the TV to see people speculating whether it’s going to take this time, and if it doesn’t, they will be back on the air to speculate why.
Anna Nicole Smith spent her entire life trying to be famous. When she became famous, she spent all of her time trying to stay famous. When she died, we all wondered what could have happened. She was a tragic figure who died too young. I don’t think anyone was surprised. The day before she died, though, she was a laughingstock. People loved to look at the ex-Playmate who got fat and walked around acting like a stoned mental patient. “How could this happen?” we asked.
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