CSotD: For whom the chimp skates
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It's tough being a cartoonist today, because the world seem determined to turn any gag, no matter how silly or far-fetched, into reality. Take today's "The Duplex," for example.
That's not a gag. That's a report on the state of the union.
In going through today's comics, there were several political cartoons taking the media to task for helping to fuel Sarah Palin's … well, "campaign" or "antics," depending on your POV.
But at least, as a former VP candidate, there is an objective reason to keep the cameras on her. It's also important to remember that George W. Bush was also looked upon as an unelectable lightweight early on, so it's irresponsible to simply dismiss a candidate as frivolous based on what the news directors think makes a viable politician.
Sarah Palin aside, however, the evening newscast is drifting further and further away from hard news and more and more into the realm of rollerskating YouTube chimps, and, in fact, I've seen viral YouTube videos on the NBC Nightly News, and not just as the "Finally, tonight … " feature.
There was a time, decades ago, when the Big Three networks kept their news departments and entertainment departments separate, and, without the competition of cable networks or the Internet, those newscasts helped set the agenda.
If we had, back then, been waging two wars, trying to recover from a financial meltdown and dealing with energy prices and the clean-up of some natural disasters around the nation and around the globe, there would have been little airtime on those newscasts devoted to rollerskating chimps.
Elitist? Well, first of all, it's half an hour. It's not like Robert Trout and Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley stripped all stupid sh*t from the entire TV schedule.
There was, however, a greater sense of "time and place" a generation ago. Bud Collyer could have contestants throw pies at each other on "Beat the Clock," and Art Linkletter could entice talkative children into saying funny things on "House Party," and Jack Barry could let women weave tales of domestic tragedy to win a washing machine on "Queen for a Day," but the "news" was grown-up time.
That was then. This is now.
There was , in the early 60's, a fellow named Dick Tuck, who used to pull political media pranks like planting children in a Chinese-American neighborhood to greet Richard Nixon with signs in English welcoming him and signs in Chinese asking about a controversial loan Nixon's brother had received from Howard Hughes.
And there was in that era a hoax set up by a comedian named Alan Abel in which a fictional group called "The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals" gained coverage by demanding that Caroline Kennedy's pony wear pants.
A few years later, Abbie Hoffman specialized in more pointed media pranks, like contending that the Yippies were going to put LSD in the Chicago reservoirs, a threat chemists immediately dismissed as impossible, but which the media covered anyway.
And four years after that, Donald Segretti and other White House operatives pranked the media in order to, among other things, derail formidable contender Ed Muskie so they could run against the more easily beaten George McGovern.
But they still had to fool reporters in order to get on the news. Today, the Michael Moores and Sarah Palins and Donald Trumps get free access because, whether their media-junky ploys be purposefully deceptive or insanely delusional, they generate ratings. And nobody cares about "quality" numbers anymore. Any numbers will do.
The Internet, it is claimed, lets people find their own news, their own resources. It frees them from the elitist filter and thus strengthens democracy.
And what do they find on the Internet that they feel is worth passing on to their friends? Videos of rollerskating chimps.
Network news was folded into the Entertainment Division of the networks some years ago, and, for all the protestations of neutrality and professionalism, it is no longer a nightly wrap-up of what people need to know, but has become a nightly encapsulation of what they are talking about.
Under that model, the rollerskating chimps are rightly part of the news.
And that's the way it is.
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