Today's Headlines

Sometimes CNN just sucks. And I don't mean to lay all my angst solely on the door step of this particular channel, but it is catching the brunt of my fury today. It seems like a variety of constellation lined up just perfectly to create one of the worst multi-tasking/viewing experiences ever. Part of the problem is that vh1 is really lagging recently. They're slowing down the Rock of Love 2 episodes and slipping Flavor of Love 3 into the mix, which leaves me wondering why they couldn't both air in any given week? Perhaps so much loving would make the world explode. For at least an hour of my run today, my choices were as follows: MSNBC's redundant, circular coverage of the primaries fallout, a very sad Drew Carey as the new host of The Price Is Right, a re-run of a RoL2 episode that I've already seen 3 times, and which doesn't get better with age, and CNN, which at least offers something in the way of variety. They are notorious, of course, for only running the same three of four stories, every twenty minutes, for hours and hours and hours. It serves short attention spans very well, but not so much prolonged viewing of the kind I was doing. As I'm struggling not to focus on my growing fatique, rounding the eight mile, I wanted to scream. Sandwiched in between a story about a tornado demolishing a dormitory in Tennessee and the endless, nauseating pontificating on the cause of Heath Ledger's death (chemical overdose, surprise!) and whether or not it was suicide (we'll never know, surprise!), is some of the worse celebrity-focused primary coverage ever. You should know that they were doing a special edition of some oddly conceived super Tuesday for celebrities in which they asked people with WAY too much time on their hands to vote on pressing issues such as "Which star couple is going to last longest? and Who is more likely to stay clean, Amy Winehouse or Lindsay Lohan?" Somehow this eventually segued into a viewer poll on whether or not Oprah should have backed Clinton instead of Obama. Now my irritation was complete.

The poll, apparently, strong indicated that most of the poll-takers think Oprah did the wrong thing, here. They followed up this revelation, which for some bizarro-land reason, qualifies as news, with an emailed viewer comment. "Kathy" was upset because on her show she is very vocal about her support of women and women's issues. Kathy felt that instead of being true to her principles and supporting the obvious choice--another woman, Hillary--she "let race get in the way." Luckily, they had a vh1 commentator (wouldn't this be simply a "commenter," the distinction eludes me yet) to proclaim this statement "ignorant," which clearly it is. The CNN interviewer, whose name I don't remember right now, nervously backpedaled for a minute and changed the subject. They cut to a shot of Oprah speaking to an audience of Obama supporters and mimicking the women who have had the audacity to ask her, and here you have to imagine Oprah doing her best anal-retentive white lady, "How could you do it?" If she commented beyond the laughter and booing this got from the audience, directed at these ladies, they didn't air it.

And in breaking news, recent coroner reports show conclusively that Heath Ledger died from an overdose of six different prescription medications. Medical professionals and police are holding off from ruling it a suicide due to a lack of clues. Now let's go to some Hollywood reporters who lament the intrusiveness of the press and speculate on the emotional state of Matilda, including whether or not she'll need counseling later in life.

We're doomed.