The television screen was filled with images of thousands of Egyptians joyously celebrating in the streets of Cairo. There, on the left side of the screen, in large cap letters, were the words "MUBARAK STEPS DOWN".
I knew I was witnessing a moment in history. Moments such as these happen only a few times in our lifetimes. I wanted to soak it in.
But while the Egyptians were celebrating their historic moment, other important news was fighting for my attention. My eye kept going to the endless crawl on the bottom third of the screen. There, in slightly smaller type, I was informed of several momentous events happening right here at home:
Lady Gaga releases highly anticipated new single, 'Born This Way"
Kid Rock defends decision to perform in snowy Arkansas
Lindsay Lohan tweets "I would never steal"
Donald Trump to consider running as GOP challenger in 2012
Scarlett Johansson representative knocks down rumors that Scarlett is dating Sean Penn
Thank you, MSNBC, for interrupting coverage of a major world event with headlines ripped from The National Enquirer. As always, you managed to trivialize important news with total trivia.
There was a time when crawls were reserved for major breaking news, sports scores and emergencies. Today, that batshit crazy crawl is with us all the time. That's bad enough. But now, the steady stream of headlines moving along the bottom of our tv screens includes an increasingly absurd mashup of legitimate news and "Showbiz Tonite" gossip.
The line between hard news and entertainment is now blurrier than those nighttime scenes of Cairo's Tahrir Square. And there is no going back.
How I yearn for those halcyon days before the crawl. The days before broadcasters decided to treat the audience as if we all suffer from A.D.D. and need a 24/7 drip of inane celebrity gossip to hold our collective attention.
When the Apollo 11 moon landing happened in 1969, millions of us sat mesmerized for hours in front of our tv screens. Can you imagine if Neil Armstrong's first step on the lunar surface had to compete with a news ticker announcing the entertainment headlines of the day? Picture, if you will, Walter Cronkite narrating those grainy, black and white shots of Neil Armstrong emerging from the lunar module, while a ticker along the bottom of the tv screen read:
Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens call it quits
Disney's "The Love Bug" highest grossing film of 1969
The Archies' "Sugar Sugar" tops the charts for 4th consecutive week
Twiggy celebrates 20th BD
"The Dating Game" begins fifth season
Would the moon landing have seemed half as riveting with the day's pop culture headlines dragging us back down to earth?
Now, no event – no matter how significant – is important enough to merit our total focus. And no pop culture tidbit is too trivial to be deemed unworthy of our undivided attention. I never thought I'd see the names "Hosni Mubarak" and "Lindsay Lohan" sharing the same screen. But in today's world – where we no longer distinguish between news and nonsense – those kinds of juxtapositions are the norm.
Just once, I'd like to watch the news – or any program, for that matter – without that crazy, "Trivial Pursuits" crawl parading across the lower third. Maybe the crawl should be optional, like closed captions. That would be an improvement (I wonder how many viewers would choose to keep the "crawl" option turned on?).
Or maybe the so-called news media will come to their senses and decide to focus just on the news. Now, that would be truly revolutionary. And completely unlikely.
God forbid if World War III breaks out anytime soon. Just as the missiles are headed towards our shores, we'll look up at our television screens for the last time and gasp as we read:
WORLD COMES TO AN END!
Kim Kardashian admits to having liposuction...
Snookie enters rehab...
Justin Beiber introduces shampoo line...
CNN runs "this is CNN the worldwide leader in news" across the screen every few minutes or so.
It's as though there is so little notable things going on in the world that we need to be alerted to these things. News has become just another form of entertainment.
Posted by: JeffKwiatek | February 15, 2011 at 01:24 PM
Ah yes, so true. And I think they call it "INFOtainment".
Posted by: Marcie Judelson | February 15, 2011 at 01:32 PM
You are such a good writer (seriously).
Posted by: Tim Coote | March 07, 2011 at 01:18 PM
Wow, Tim, THANK YOU. That means a lot. Now, you wouldn't happen to know of any Copywriter jobs in SF??
By the way, that same post was the "Editor's Pick" on OpenSalon.com a few weeks ago (http://open.salon.com/blog/marcie_j)...I was too thrilled for words. These are big moments in the life of a sporadic, unpaid blogger!
Posted by: Marcie Judelson | March 07, 2011 at 01:35 PM
Hey, no problem. I, too know the life of the sporadic and unpaid, so keep it up for all of us.
Posted by: Tim Coote | March 07, 2011 at 01:44 PM
I'm trying!! Please email me when you have a moment and tell me what you've been up to.
(marciejudelson@comcast.net).
Posted by: Marcie Judelson | March 07, 2011 at 01:48 PM
Hey, will do!
I'm busy as all hell but I think my writing is probably going to stay pretty marginal considering I just wrote a piece about testicle torsion (it might interest someone out there, right?).
Posted by: Tim Coote | March 09, 2011 at 11:24 PM
There's a simple reason for all the distraction on everyone's TV screen: to SELL us something. I would conclude that it's something that we don't need. And it's not just on our TVs. This bombardment of visual and textual information along with our daily multi-tasking lives is conditioning us into a new behavior that seems to reinforce an A.D.D. lifestyle. Think about it, we have smart phones that go with us everywhere, connecting us to anything and distracting us from everything. You can't have a meaningful conversation without interruption from a call, a text or an email. It's funny, but it seems like it's a race to absorb as much information as possible in the shortest period of time in order to...what? What? What's the hurry? Where are we going that we are in such a hurry to arrive? Slow down. Breathe. Smell the roses. Put technology in its place and let's get our lives back. Sorry for the rant, but this subject could go on and on, but hopefully you get where this is going.
Posted by: anonymous | March 22, 2011 at 01:53 PM
I absolutely agree with you about the selling motive. And I also share a lot of your same thoughts/concerns about the Brave New World of technology. Oops, gotta go...a new email just came in.
Posted by: Marcie Judelson | March 22, 2011 at 08:06 PM
In the latter point of you, this news about entertainment I think is a way to balance the good and bad news and especially the feelings that the viewers may have. But it's always up to the viewers where they want to focus into, but teasers I suppose is made to make viewers stay tuned for more, even if it's about Kim K's liposuction or whatever that comes in the lime light.
Posted by: Dennis Rode | March 28, 2011 at 12:27 AM