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The media is starting to get out of control  Ben Sanford I guess there will always be questions to which there are no answers. I'm talking about questions like "Where did the universe come from?" "What is the meaning of life?" and "Why are Starkville radio stations still playing the Spin Doctors?" No one will ever know these answers. To ponder them is futile. Fortunately, there are questions out there to which there are very obvious answers (by which I mean "no") such as: Does anyone actually give a rat's buttocks what Elian Gonzales' third cousin's nephew's distant relative did yesterday? How about some historic live footage of little Elian playing in a school playground, in his back yard or in his uncle's bathtub ‹ is this newsworthy? And don't you just hate it when you're intensely watching the MSU Channel's On-Air (motto: "We'll play reruns until your corpse withers away"), and it's the climactic part where the host turns to the guest and says "OK, now let's talk about the thread-count of the towels that they loan out in the Sanderson Center," and right then you're interrupted by the latest breaking news: "Elian eats a Jell-o pudding pop‹story and live footage at 10!" Of course you don't hate it, because the MSU Channel never gets interrupted by anything, let alone breaking news. In fact, nuclear war could break out across the globe and you could be sure that you will not miss a beat of the 237th consecutive broadcast of the Mark Applebaum Jazz Trio concert. I won't say anything more about the MSU Channel because my friend Jack Ford already said everything best in a previous column. However, I will say that if a huge asteroid were to plummet to earth, land in the ocean and cause a giant computer-generated tidal wave to destroy only the MSU Channel's broadcasting headquarters, I doubt the government would launch Robert Duval into space to try and stop it. Well, enough with the MSU bashing; it's time to bash the media some more. It's truly perplexing: the media has been covering Elian Gonzales with the thoroughness and ferocity expected of a presidential sex scandal, despite the fact that Elian's personal life is of nobody's interest. I see that historic footage of Elian walking and holding hands with his uncle, and I try to imagine the whole picture: there they are, strolling through the neighborhood without a care (as all people who are being hounded by the media often do). Meanwhile, there are hundreds of journalists and photographers walking backwards 10 feet in front of them, yelling things like: "How do you feel about staying here in America?" "When do you expect to reunite with your father?" and "What is the nature of your relationship with Monica Lewinsky?" C'mon, media ‹ enough is enough. |
