I think the press ought to call it the 24-hour news REcycle. Because if you watch one network long enough you see the repeat segments as “breaking news” (thereby rendering that statement inaccurate). Also, the new name is eco-friendly.
Here’s the news: Palin quits governorship; Franken is senator (finally); Obama heads to Russia to warm up the Chilly War that evolved under Bush (who looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul); there is ethnic unrest in China; more clerics back Ahmadinejad’s opposition in Iran; President Zelaya of Honduras was prevented from returning to his country; Michael Jackson is still dead and public does NOT need to know all of the details of his poor kids; Al Sharpton is getting a piece of Jackson action as commentator because, well, he is Al Sharpton; the economy still sucks; Pakistan is a nuclear power fighting Taliban insurgency; the popularly elected leader of Myanmar who has been under house arrest for 15 years is still on trial; Afghanistan is a war zone; Federer is into gold lame embroidery (ode to Michael Jackson?). What have I left out?
Even though I have mentioned Anderson Cooper’s maddeningly, intense coverage of everything large and small, he did save my life once although we have never met.
This episode happened a little over a year ago. I was having a really bad day at work. Everything that could go wrong did, in fact, go wrong. There was an enormous amount of colleague in-fighting, and nasty in-fighting at that. And, everyone came to me to settle the arguments and assess responsibility. All that meant was that everyone then blamed me. My son was having issues at school and I had to meet with the principal. A dear friend of the family was falling faster into the swirl of dementia and I was part of the “first response team”. The economy and my business were under severe pressure — showing the signs of the great crash that was coming.
I was scared and I was tired and I felt a little hopeless, and everything started to boil over. I understood in that moment that normal, ordinary people can fall off a cliff. But I stopped and thought about how this would play on the 24-hour news cycle: a panel of experts — white, gay and Jewish — would be disowning me as not white (someone would figure out something), not gay (because I was once engaged to a man) and not Jewish (reform, shreform) while another panel of experts — NRA supporters and ultra-right — would look into my background pointing to all the ways that, had I followed, their doctrine, I would have been ok. And then there is the blogging through commercials. So, I decided that I could not put my beloved family through that circus and I left the office and worked from home the rest of the day. And that is how Anderson Cooper saved my life.