Last month on the “Rachel Maddow” show, Rachel, through the magic of television, called Glenn Beck a hypocrite and a liar. Also for those who may have missed it, Glenn Beck called Rachel Maddow a liar and unpatriotic.
And in the next hour, Bill O’Reilly slammed Keith Olbermann for his political views while Mr. Olbermann gave his “worst person in the world” vote again to Bill O’Reilly. This behavior is akin to me and my brothers’ behavior on a 20-hour drive to California on vacation in a 1975 Maverick with no air conditioning. In 1980. When we were 12.
I watch cable TV.I watch because I assume that sooner or later these adults will start acting like adults and just give the news. I am often wrong about that. As soon as I start to get involved in a story, the next thing I know one or more of these nozzelheads will slam the others’ network about some “spin “they put on a story and it becomes another battle along the lines of “he hit me first.”
Now radio has started to get in on it. A local station that I like, because they play songs that have intelligible lyrics, has given us the “good news.” Clearly not all news is good, and most of it isn’t. How about you let the public make up its own mind about the good or bad news and just give it to us straight? We can decide whether we want to listen to it (it’s called a power button) or not. Stop dictating to the people what you think is news.
I grew up with Huntley and Brinkley giving us the news every night. Vietnam War deaths, race riots across America and plenty of hatred to go around. Still they gave it to us straight and without opinion.
We didn’t need their opinion – it went without saying that we could make up our own mind about what we saw, and we questioned those events. And if we wanted further facts on a subject we could always go to the one place where we could get information, a newspaper. Newspapers only had space for opinion in the OP-ED section. The rest of it was for information and god bless the sports page.
But keep tuning into cable news. Maybe one day they will quit this childlike behavior and go back to doing what they set out to do. Report the news, not become a part of it.
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