Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The 24-Hour Newscycle & The Death of Journalism

A bit of an overstatement, maybe, but as I was watching FoxNews (I know, believe me, it was NOT my idea, the TV in the break area is set to FoxNews) I witnessed yet another pathetic example of continuous coverage letting people talk even when they have nothing intelligent to say.

Two women, supposed professionals, were criticizing the SEAL team that took out bin Laden for not taking his wife into custody. I don't know whether they should have taken her or not, but listening to these women state with absolute certainty that they should have and refute the explanation for why they hadn't almost made my head explode.

Their brilliance:

1) "She's not very big, she couldn't weigh more than 100 lbs."

Really? Maybe they have a picture they're not showing, but the one on the screen shows a woman from the neck up, veiled with a black bar across her eyes. You can only see about one inch of forehead and maybe two inches of nose and chin. There is no way to know how much she weighs and since she isn't exactly rockin' stellar cheekbones, anything goes.

2) "There's always room for one more when I'm driving the kids around."

Drive your kids around in a helicopter much? I'll concede when driving in a car, it is possible to cram a lot of people in a small space. (Personal best, 8 people + driver in a taxi ({sedan}) I'm not an aviation expert and I've never flown a helicopter (or flown in one, for that matter), but I have a sneaking suspicion that the total amount of weight in the helicopter might factor in to the pilot's ability to get said 'copter off the ground successfully, but what do I know?

Please, for the love of ...... If you don't have something intelligent to say go back to yammering about celebrities. I don't really care if you make sense or not when you're doing your daily Lindsay Lohan update.