People who know not Thing One about President Obama’s cap and trade plan or health care proposals are well aware of last week’s Beer Summit, in which he, Vice President Biden, his friend Skip Gates, and his friend’s arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley met to have the World’s Most Awkward Consumption of an Alcoholic Beverage.
There was consensus in this divided nation over the situation: One beer? Really? Who just has one?
And there was more agreement, too, over the breathless coverage over the meeting. An audio recording of the assault of camera shutters recording the event for posterity sounded like some sort of mortar attack.
Worse was the countdown clock—yes, the countdown clock—to the meeting visible on CNN and MSNBC. One network helpfully featured a clip art beer mug, complete with suds. It was news when the “summit” was announced. It was “news” when the meeting was moved from the picnic table near the Obama girl’s swingset to the Rose Garden. All afternoon, the updates and developments were flung. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson remained dead.
This is clearly a function of too many wolverines, not enough rabbits. Oh, capitalism will eventually ferret out the weaker ones, sure enough, but in the meantime, there’s not enough original content to go around. That means absolutely mundane stories are often elevated to Drudge siren status, and CNN seems to have a Homeland Security Alert system all its own when it comes to new news, although the degrees are apparently a closely guarded secret. What, please, is the difference between “breaking news,” “developing story,” “new development,” and “Happening Now”?
I suppose we’ll have to tune in to find out. But with ridiculousness like this—I will never forget the day I walk past a TV set tuned to Fox News, which broke into regular programming to announce that Madonna had fallen from a horse—fewer and fewer of us will be getting our news from television at all.
