It’s the same &%$! thing, show after show. You start with a news slant, then the predictable bobbleheads come in and bobble, bobble, bobble. Then maybe a few different ones will bobble, bobble, bobble some more. Sometimes the whole episode is one topic, or maybe 90% one topic and the other “topic” amounts to barely a topic, a hint, a teaser. This type of programming is not just left or right, really not much news in the classic old time sense, just one slant. Left, right, religious, whatever.
    When I do watch I often fast forward through the bobbleheads. They have little to offer. If it’s an expert, maybe I’ll watch. MAYBE.
    Commercial time!. Overweight people dancing and singing an ode to a diabetes med. Shower fixer for old fogies. Did you get poisoned at camp, “You got screwed?” Wanna sue? ARE WE DONE YET??? Nope, nope, nope… ah, now back to your regular scheduled slanted news and bobbleheads.
    I think the only one I’ve watched that’s different is when Rachel Maddow does history. The inferences are obvious, her slant is obvious, but I use the history given, Google, ask around, decide for myself. Sometimes connections are not as obvious as one would assume. There’s more to the story than a slant.
    Then you have other programs with over the top, sarcastic, “do it live!” hosts who act as if they’re God. Maybe an interview or two where essentially they kiss each other’s posteriors.
    Let’s make it clear…
    No matter what the slant, neither model is real news, both are bad for America in the wider view, and therefore both SUCK.
    It should also be clear I am hitting on both right and left here. As a Communications/Mass Media major: with a heavy English emphasis, I understand that this kind of programming that dominates TV, and some radio and Sirius/XM political programming, has long since flushed down the sewer pipes any objectivity. And objectivity has sunk deep to the bottom of the communications septic tank. If there is a bottom.
    Part of this is due to investigative journalism that, since Watergate, has become more like partisan framing with a mix of half truths. Proof? Who needs proof? At best you get a tiny bit of truth frosting on a huge black as tar convenient assumption cake. Fair production values: mostly close ups and over the shoulder shots. If you’re looking for fine camera work forget it. Now the graphics can be good, but so what? It’s like a neat decoration on that same black as hell cake.
    And too often the content means squat. LOOK, I could care less if Ron DeSantis wears heels inside his boots. Joe Biden trips. Trump calls anyone a name who might not put him in a positive light. Some ex president on his own social network doing his usual schtick? Hey, can I create my own social network and get that kind of attention? Pols and pundits do what they must to get attention, especially those so much into pure performative, over the top, hyperbole that goes beyond “hyperbole.” The media should resist because, well, “NEWS.” That’s NOT “news, and shouldn’t be some clown show, or evil carnival, instead.
    But day after day it is. Reminds me of some political version of Ray Bradbury’s book, Something Wicked this Way Comes, where malevolent beings live off the emotions, the fear, the hate from those they want to enslave, turn into one sided cult members.
    Day after day, newscast after newscast it’s all so Groundhog’s Day-ish, or Before I Fall without the great, life ending, moral lesson where our heroine saves the misunderstood, bullied, kid. And learns to love her family, and her flawed friends, even more. Or some never ending UN-Happy Death Day, with brief moments of “finally we’re where we should be.” We got rid of some politician, save the day via the Court, then it just starts all over again. Surprise!???
    Seems a lot of what we have now is like bad time loop script, and bad programming.

                                    -30-

    “Inspection” is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 50 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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