Well, approximately 24 hours after the biggest election of my long life, I'm just snapping back into focus. Last night was spent in a sports bar in Manhattan in the company of friends and a half dozen very large TV screens. Fox, CNN and MSNBC were in a frantic competition to impress us with an astoundingly vulgar array of pundits and digital effects. Floating, rotating pie charts, inscrutable hourglass graphs, gopher-like Wolf Blitzers. Electronic cotton candy. All fluff and no stuff.
My spouse began weeping with anxiety around 7:00PM, began weeping with cautious optimism around 9:00PM, and wept copiously with joy around 10:30. She would run outside for a smoke every 30 minutes and update the bus drivers roosting on the corner. It was, to be honest, a wonderful evening. The Egyptian cab driver who delivered us to our residence around 1:00AM spoke perfect English and opined that Obama will be magical in his effect on the Third World. A magical NYC evening, mirrored I am sure, all over America.
So what is my beef?
My beef is this morning's sad, sad realization that commercial television is utterly indifferent to human emotion. EVERY grain of nobility, courage, brotherhood and joy that spilled from the tubes last night was cold leftovers by this morning as a parade of scavengers picked over the election and began to lay out the ground rules for Obama. No leftward movement. Only a "centrist" policy would make sense! The repeated hammering of this bullshit theme by shills like Scarborough and Buchanan at MSNBC and the army of androids at CNN. And then in desperation I turn to C-SPAN to hear callers arguing the crumbs of information they have been fed by Fox, CBS, ABC.
Aside from a few months in England and Spain, I have never lived anywhere but the USA. Is TV this bad everywhere? Are Danes being fed this tripe? Or the Germans? The Japanese? Canada? Is there hope?