STOP DYING! FOR A LITTLE WHILE ANYWAY.
That about does it.
It's not that I really mind them dying, but what I do mind is the fact that the TV networks and the news channels stop the world to talk about the dead person. I could see that if it were somebody like the President or an American Idol, but not just for anybody famous.
The last few weeks, famous people have been dropping like flies. And the TV people have been all over it. First, it was Walter Cronkite. Seeing how the guy must have been around 116, I guess the networks were pretty much just hanging around the guy with a mirror under his nose. Because as soon as he checked out, Fox News interrupted its programming to tell the unabridged Walter Cronkite story. The other news channels did the same thing. It's kind of like buzzards flocking to a corpse.
It was less than fascinating, although I was enchanted to learn that as a boy, he preferred grape to strawberry jelly. I learned just about everything else the guy ever did or said. Now all human lives are of value, and I'm not one to make fun of the dead. Actually, I would much prefer to make fun of the living, when they can be aware of it, and hopefully just a little ticked off.
But the guy was just a TV news reader. He read real well and for that I commend him, but really, what else did he ever do? I mean that impacted my life.
Anyway, Walter was hardly settled into his casket when Michael Jackson was murdered. And all of a sudden all of those important news stories that the news channels keep harping on, ceased to matter for about 48 hours. Michael Jackson? I'm sorry the guy's dead, but what can you say for 2 straight days about anybody being dead.
Then yesterday Teddy Kennedy dies. The funny thing is even those who spent years making fun of him, suddenly began to put wings and a halo on the guy. The networks even send camera crews and top notch reporters to Cape Cod to cover the death. How do you cover a death?
It's not like it's a developing story, although no one has bothered to tell Fox News that. One of their cadre of blonde women gushed yesterday, "Breaking News! We're continuing to follow the death of Senator Kennedy."
Huh? What develops? I'm surprised they didn't have a camera trained on the body to cover rigor mortis setting in. They did have a camera at Arlington National Cemetery to show us where Kennedy was going to be buried. That's right...a live shot of a cemetery. They could have at least shown us the grave being dug.
And do we, the viewers, really want a blow by blow account of everything the dead guy has ever done? I mean we didn't care before he died. Now that he's dead, the truth is, he's even less relevant. I don't mean to sound cold, but am i wrong? I thought not.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if one news channel simply said, "Senator Kennedy died. And now on to other news..." Anything beyond that, and I'm getting bored. Hey, I don't have that many years left myself and I sure don't want to spend them watching details on a guy's death...especially not when I could be watching Sean Hannity telling other people what great Americans they are. Now that's the sort of quality programming I'm looking for.
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