David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. The Assault on Reason, Indeed
Al Gore may have made global warming cool, but he’s tilting at windmills to suggest that Americans shed fatty infotainment from our daily diets in favor of the granola of the hard news of the day.
When Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the most piquant qualities of the product created by the distillery that planned to host her 21st birthday party bash by bashing up her ride, we want, nay, deserve to know. As for the complicity we may share for our inattentiveness and tremulousness in the run-up to a now spectacularly botched war cooked up by a leader who petulantly holds his breath and keens loudly until he gets his way and wrecks our nation’s global reputation the way Lohan did her car, well, who wants to keep up with that sort of thing? That sh!t’s depressing!
Yet here’s Gore, kvetching that we’re not paying attention to the things in life that really matter: “What is it about our collective decision-making process that has led us to this state of affairs where we spend much more time in the public forum talking about – or receiving information about – Britney Spears shaving her head or Paris Hilton going to jail?”
Gore also assailed the “destruction of the boundary between news and entertainment” and warned that we as a people are “vulnerable as a democracy to mass and continuing distraction.”
Well, excuse me, but a “mass and continuing distraction” seems to be the only logical way to contend with a war that has served to create more terrorists, a woozily punch-drunk economy in which America’s chief export is its jobs and the specter of a future environmental landscape that’ll make “A Boy and His Dog,” “Children of Men,” “Blade Runner,” “The Omega Man,” “Soylent Green,” “28 Days Later,” “Waterworld,” “Escape from New York,” “Hell Comes to Frogtown,” “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” collectively look like a tea party. We’re like Hugh Laurie’s Gregory House, popping Vicodin like they’re breath mints to stave off our pain and anxiety, only our Vicodin is “Access Hollywood.”
Thoughtfully, the White House seems to agree, as it has done everything it can to curtail coverage of the war in Iraq. Fewer than 100 journalists remain embedded with the troops, fewer than the 143 media employees killed during the war. And: “In an operational security slide presentation … for military supervisors, media is defined as a ‘nontraditional’ threat in the same category as drug cartels.”
But then, we’re not doing our job as well as we might, either: Only 5.5 million people watched “National Bingo Night” on Friday, and fewer than 3 million tuned in last night to Fox’s latest reality sensation, “On the Lot.” Both of those shows are premium-grade when it comes to shutting down the old cerebrum, and they’re opportunities being squandered. We can – and must – do better.
(Incidentally, other headlines linked on the page with the Al Gore story include “Mexicans Boo Miss USA” and “Boy Bags Wild Hog Bigger Than ‘Hogzilla.’” Gore has his work cut out for him.)