What has a shorter attention span than the American Media?
Give up?
Nothing, and nobody.
A few minutes ago my wife and I finished last night’s Daily Show/Colbert. We were about to turn our attention to Keith Olbermann, which was being saved to my hard drive as we watched Jon and Stephen. (That way we can speed through the commercials)
A digression: I consider the Daily Show and Colbert, especially Colbert, to be fine journalism, albeit of the satirical variety. I freely admit that I watch Keith for the guilty pleasure of having my own opinions validated. We lefties waited a long time for someone to pander to us, and now that there’s someone doing it, we might as well enjoy it.
Back to the main event. Where was I? Let’s see. O, right. Short attention spans.
So, there we were, settling in to watch Keith skewer Mark Sanford some more, but alas, Sanford is so yesterday. Much to Sanford’s probable delight, yesterday’s all Sanford all the time media has morphed into today’s all Michael Jackson all the time-really all the time- media. So far as I could see as I sped through the spooled portion of the show (including the last 15 minutes of “Hardball”), there were no stories to count down. There was only one story: the death of a very bizarre, albeit hugely talented performer. Apparently Farrah Fawcett has been lost in the undertow.
So, exit Mark Sanford, stage right (at least I assume he’d exit stage right, given his choice). Sanford himself had driven Iran from the public consciousness, or at least the media consciousness.
And so it goes. If our media was a child it would be on Ritalin.
One Comment