It seems we have a global food crisis on our hands. Who knew? Well I sure as hell wouldn't, if the major news outlets were all I paid attention to. Why do I have to go to National fucking Geographic to find out about this? What network news editor decided that telling the American people about a global food crisis was a less important story than manufactured outrage about something Wes Clark said? Why aren't all the networks starting their broadcasts by screaming "Ohmifuckingod! We're out of food!!! HALP!"? Sure, I catch these little snippets here and there, such as stories about Japan's butter shortage or about Costco rationing basmati rice in California. But where is the big picture view? Why do these stories have to be doled out like little clues leading up to the two-part season finale in which it is revealed that the food crisis is the result of the Daleks stealing the Earth's food to feed their new army of genetically-engineered pig slaves?
I see this as yet another sign of the decline of our media. It's lamentable but relatively unimportant that there are now kids entering college who do not remember a time when you could turn on MTV and see music videos. (Yeah, yeah, get off my lawn, yadda yadda . . .) But is it too much to ask that I be able to turn on CNN Headline News and be able to watch, you know, a summary of news headlines? Isn't that the whole point of the network? When I was a kid and we only had the three major networks plus PBS, you could watch the evening news at 6:30pm or not at all. If you wanted to watch the news while eating dinner at 7:00pm, well you were just shit-outta-luck; it was Three's Company reruns for you. But then came Headline News! You could get a half-hour full of national news anytime you wanted, even at 1:30am at the 24-hour laundromat on Nth Street. I thought 24-7 access to TV news was a problem we had solved a long time ago. If it ain't broke, don't fuck with it.
So why is it that now when I want to the news while eating dinner at 7:00pm, I turn on the so-called Headline News channel only to be greeted by a stream of idiotic bile spewing from the mouth of Glenn fucking Beck? You expect me to keep food down with that shit on? Fuck, even the Three's Company reruns were better than that. And it's not like I can just wait until his wretched show is over and then get me some news headlines, 'cause after him they have Nancy Grace, and after her they replay Glenn Beck again, and then her again, and then fucking Showbiz Tonight, and then Glenn Beck a third time, and so on. CNN Headline News has no headline news between 7pm and 3am!! WTF??? Do I have to have a TiVo now just to watch the fucking news? Hell, if some network exec has decided that Glenn Beck absolutely has to have three hours a day of TV time to share his ex recto views with the rest of us, couldn't they have put him on one of the other 200+ cable/satellite channels? Put him on QVC, and let him peddle his brand of self-satisfied pseudo-conservatism in between pitches for cubic zirconia necklaces and Ginsu knives.
Where have you gone, Lynne Russell? A news-hungry nation turns its eyes to you.
