Stop the presses! Raise your anticipatory adrenalin level! Big big news! Big, I tell you!
Posted on:: September 6th, 2005
I just got an email headlined “CNN Breaking News” to let me know that washed-up, marginally talented, possibly nice guy Bob Denver of Gilligan’s Isle is dead.
Excuse me, but in the current world, that counts as breaking news? Can you imagine what the conversation around the editorial table must have been? And why didn’t it result in anyone resigning? A long time ago? [Tags: media]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Editorial Table? Don’t you mean the _Editorial Administrative Interface_????
The CMS cant resign. Who would update the site with Shania Twain gossip?
Hey, but he *did* die this past Friday …
They got the facts right, but not the values. In an age of Biblical-style flooding, terrorism, Supreme Court realignments, economic shifts, if I get an email marked “Breaking News,” I expect something a little more urgent than the death of a sitcom star who hasn’t had a sitcom in umpty years.
Gilligan may have always screwed up but at least his heart was in the right place. More than I can say about the monkey boy in Whitehouse right now.
“Laugh while you can monkey boy!”
Holy Lucifer I would enjoy Saturday Night Live classic jokes (News Flash: This just in Nikita Kruschev is STILL dead), and Bob Denver news alerts any day. Instead, I go on-line and see CNN clips of Christianne Amanpour driving around in swamp boats, wearing sunglasses, talking to distressed people but never offering to help them get in her boat, with a tight smirk on her face like she is MacArthur about to land at Inchon…
Then I read then CNN website headlines —
Watch: Bodies bob in New Orleans floodwaters
Watch: City floats in a toxic stew
It’s just a bit too much CNN !!
You’ve forgottten the vast cultural significance of Maynard G. Krebs
Referring to any fellow human being who has just passed as washed-up, marginally talented is crude at best. Please consider the feelings of the deceased’s family and friends when you post such statements publicly.
Surprised,
You’ve got a point.
On the other hand, considering the number of non-celebrity bodies that are going to be washed up onto the shores of Lake Ponchartrain, and considering that this story is a distraction from the ongoing disaster–for instance, are we going to allow the forced diaspora of the majority of black people from New Orleans?–that it’s understandable David might be a bit snarky.
Me? I’m just mad, mad as hell, and trying not to stroke out.
Having long ago read John Barry’s Rising Tide, and recommended it to damn near everyone I know, I’ve got his The Great Influenza on my desk now.
I am hoping to read it before I die of avian flu.
Not to worry adamsj, I’m sure that we will eventually learn that the president is begging public health authorities even now to do something about avian flu.
David: “I expect something a little more urgent than the death of a sitcom star who hasn’t had a sitcom in umpty years”
But why call for anybody’s resignation? Has your unsubscribe button broken down?
I used to work for a student mag. Very good magazine, but also a little playful at times. If there was no news good enough to put on the frontpage, we’d make news. Perhaps subscribing to a service that makes up news would be a solution for you?
Brian: “never offering to help them get in her boat”
How do you know that? Have you been following her 24/7?
If she had had helped people into her boat on-camera, no doubt folks would have lambasted her for self-aggrandization. To some you can never do good.
In the better old days, when TV journalists thought they were upoholding a public trust, editors would have resigned before treating the death of Gilligan as urgent news. So, I’m not callling for anyone to resign. I’m pointing to a decline in standards.