Posted by
John David Powell on Tuesday, July 07, 2009 8:26:31 AM
No sound came from
the big screen TV dominating the far end of the dining area, but the
CNN graphics told the distasteful story that made the over-cooked fish
sticks on my plate look appetizing.
I learned if I stayed at the ranch Tuesday, I could watch “continuous” coverage of the Michael Jackson Memorial on CNN.
I’m not sure what was the most disturbing: a global cable news network
spending god-knows-how-much money in its continuing coverage of the
death of a drug-addled musician whose last hit was toward the end of
the last century, or clowns in the newsroom not knowing the difference
between “continuous” and “continual”. (Continuous means unbroken. Think
a snake’s hisssss.)
Of course, the newsroom illiterati may be correct. They may be
foisting upon their viewers an unbroken coverage of the sights, sounds,
and sickness of Jacko’s L.A. memorial service. No reason to doubt that.
Just take a look at CNN’s Web page (which will up their hit count, so
maybe you should just take me at my word.). The Breaking News banner
headline right now tells me the service will feature Mariah Carey,
Usher, and Stevie Wonder. Be still my heart!
The lead story covers those who won tickets to the event. And the
top news story as of this writing is Stuart Smalley going to the U.S.
Senate. Hey, I would have used the senator’s real name, but I’m just
reporting how CNN headlined it.
So, I got to thinking about what real news CNN chose not to cover in depth today, or Tuesday, for that matter.
Seven U.S.Marines died Monday in Afghanistan as thousands of Devil
Dogs continue their massive operation against the Taliban, our former
allies against the Soviet Union. Meantime, a terrorist blew up himself
and his vehicle outside the gate of NATO’s main base in the region,
taking two civilians with him and injuring 14 others.
But on CNN, it’s all Jacko, all the time.
Over in Nigeria, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta
took credit for an attack on a Chevron oil pipeline and the seizure of
a chemical tanker and its six-member crew over the weekend. Terrorist
attacks in the Niger River delta have cut more than 20 percent of
Nigeria’s oil exports since 2006. By the way, Nigeria is the fifth top
exporter of oil to the United States and is the leading oil producer in
Africa.
But on CNN, we can watch Jacko’s fans world wide with Facebook.
Leftist leaders in Central and South America Monday continued their
political and military strong arming of Honduras, increasing the
likelihood of war in the nation that kicked out its thug president for
trying to circumvent the country’s constitution. Monday, Honduran
troops blocked an airport runway to keep Manuel Zelaya from landing in
a plane provided by Venezuela’s chief cabron Hugo Chavez, who supplied
the ballots and ballot boxes for Zelaya’s foiled attempt to hold an
illegal referendum on his bid to keep his job beyond the four-year term
limit, a la Chavez. Honduran lawmakers and the country’s Supreme Court
got their bellies full of Zelaya after he led a violent mob to a
military base where they stole and distributed the illegal ballots.
When last seen, Zelaya, along with the U.N. General Assembly’s leftist
president Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, was heading to El Salvador for
some political snogging with that nation’s new communist president
Mauricio Funes.
Meanwhile, Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has
more trouble on her hands than a failing national economy. Word out of
Rio this week is that the swine flu has killed more people in that
country than in any other South American nation. Argentina’s N1H1 death
rate is three times the world average. And the winter flu season is
just starting.
On CNN, special primetime coverage Tuesday will feed the belly of those who starve for continuous Jacko jibberjabber.
Israel’s top spy says Saudi Arabian leaders would ignore Israeli
jets flying over the kingdom to take out Iran’s nuclear sites. Vice
President Joe Biden says his boss wouldn’t put up a fuss if that
happened. And former U.S. United Nations ambassador John Bolton says
the Saudi blind-eye is entirely logical, adding Arab leaders would
stomp around in public, but would give thumb-ups in private to the
removal of Iran’s nuclear threat.
On CNN, we learn scalpers are selling Jacko memorial tickets online.
And, in Gaffney, S.C., lawmen think they have a serial killer in their
midst after a teenage gunshot victim died over the weekend, the fifth
murder victim in about a week.
While on CNN, we learn picking up Jacko memorial tickets is a breeze.
Mundus vult decipi