THE MEDIA AND OUR COUNTRY'S AGENDA
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Osbourne, the rocker druggie. On MTV we also have a program called
Jackass,
where people inflict pain on themselves. We've gone from
watching Hollywood's
How to Marry a Millionaire
to a TV show where
blonde bombshells actually compete with each other to marry an
unknown millionaire just to get on TV and to acquire fame and fortune.
We are fascinated with what Edith Kurzweil called this morning
"instant celebrity." That's why there are so many so-called reality shows
on television,
The Real World, Survivor,
and the rest. That's what made
Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones so popular.
Even former Vice President Dan Quayle is singing a different tune
about dysfunctional TV families . He, like George W. Bush, likes what
he sees on
The Osbournes,
a real-life glimpse at the dysfunctional fam–
ily of rock singer Ozzy Osbourne. According to an article in today's
USA Today,
Quayle thinks that at least the show depicts an intact fam–
ily. And for all its craziness, conflict, and cursing, at the core are loving
parents and some good messages, he claims. "Look at Osbourne and
how fried his brains are from taking drugs all those years," Quayle said.
"Everyone will say, 'I don't want to be like that.'" Well, apparently,
Osbourne's brains are not the only ones that have been fried . His
celebrity derives not from his drug usage, not from his dysfunctional
family, but from being on TV. That's the nature of our culture.
Look what they've done to, of all programs,
Crossfire.
It was always
a shouting match.
It
was always an interruption and yelling exercise,
but now they actually promote the show as a contest of pugilists, replete
with a live studio audience and a bell in the middle of the table to sig–
nify that one round is over and the next round begins. Look what
they've done to
Meet the Press.
r
remember when
Meet the Press
was
very staid, very hoity-toity, very proper. But Tim Russert, who has con–
tributed much, I think, to the tabloidization and dumbing down of
Meet
the Press,
is greatly celebrated as the most intelligent interviewer on tele–
vision . On a recent program, Tim Russert was seriously interviewing
two professional basketball players on current events, and the number
of "you knows" that came out of their mouths was incredible. But it's
part of the culture. Celebrity. Ratings.
On FOX News, which is supposed to be the alternative to the others,
we have the No
Spin Zone
with Bill O'Reilly, to which I say, "O'Reilly?
No spin?" Of course there's a spin on O'Reilly; of course there's bias on
FOX News . Their bias is billed as an alternative to the other bias. ABC's
Sunday program,
This Week:
their bias is taking themselves too seri–
ously. They reduced the number of minutes for the news segments and
the features segments so they cou ld increase the number of minutes that
