Feb. 23, 2007 - 22:38 MST

INFOTAINMENT

Bob Herbert of The New York Times has a way of poking fun at our idiosyncracies and in his column in today's The Rocky Mountain News he pretty well cartoons most of us. Here he is quoted in full:

AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH

"Have they buried Anna Nicole Smith yet ? Are you kidding ? Anna Nicole may be dead and rapidly decomposing, but there's too much fun still to be reaped from her story to let it die just yet. This is world-class entertainment: Larry King, Today, CNN, The New York Times."

"Even the judge in the televised hearing over what to do with Smith's remains is milking his 15 minutes, like Judge Lance Ito of O. J. Simpson fame. In a burst of wisdom from the bench, the judge, Larry Seidlin, said, "Like a Muhammad Ali fight, sometimes you have to wait the whole 10 rounds."

"When we were kids we were taught not to laugh at people who were obviously mentally or emotionally disturbed. With Smith, who was deeply and unmistakably disturbed, we put her on television and laughed and laughed. Would she say something stupid, or spill out of her dress, or pass out in public from booze or drugs ? How hysterically funny ! Then her son died. Then she died, leaving an infant daughter."

"Instead of turning away chastened, shamed, we homed in like happy vultures. Whatever entertainment value Smith had when she was alive increased exponentially when she was kind enough to die for us. Now she's on the tube around the clock."

"The story, as they say, has legs."

"There are other stories out there, but they aren't nearly as much fun. The Times reported on Monday, for example, that al-Qaida is getting its act together in Pakistan and is setting up training camps in an area that apparently we don't dare trespass in."

"I imagine there are a fair number television viewers and newspaper readers who have trouble distinguishing the relative importance of celebrity stories, like the death of Anna Nicole Smith, from other matters in the news, like the reconstitution of forces responsible for the devastating Sept. 11 attacks."

"If air time is any guide, there's no contest. It's been obvious for the longest time that the line between news and entertainment has vanished. News is entertainment. And the death of Anna Nicole SMioth is more entertaining -- for the time being, at least -- than the war in Iraq or the plodding machinations of Osama bin Laden and Ayan al-Zawahiri."

"Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were on the cover of Newsweek last week with the headline "The Girls Gone Wild Effect." When you turned to the story, there was a full-page picture of the former best friends, with a glassy-eyed Britney looking for all the world like a younger version of Anna Nicole Smith."

"The lead-in to the article said in large type: "Paris, Britney, Lindsay and Nicole - They seem to be everywhere and they may not be wearing underwear." The nation may be at war, and al-Qaida may be gearing up for a rematch. But that's no fun, not when Britney is shaving off her hair and Jennifer Aniston is reported to have a new nose and the thrill-a-minute watch over Anna Nicole's remains is still the hottest thing on TV."

"It was Neil Postman who warned in 1985 that we were amusing ourselves to death. I'm not sure anyone knew how literally to take him."

"More than twenty years later, the masses have nearly succeeded in drawing the curtains on anything that's not entertaining. No one can figure out what to do about Iraq or al-Qaida. A great American cultural center like New Orleans was all but washed away, and no one knows how to put it back together. The ice caps are melting and Al Gore is traveling the land like the town crier, raising the alarm about global warming."

"But none of that has really gotten the public' attention."

"None of it is amusing enough. As a nation of spectators, we seem content to sit with a pizza and a brew in front of the high-def flat-screen TV, obsessing over Anna Nicole et al, and giving not a thought to the possiblity that the calamitous events unfolding in the world might someday reach our doorstep."

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It seems to me that very little news is coming out of Congress now. Nothing entertaining enough for our media to get hysteric about perhaps ?

I quit trying to watch TV a long time ago when deafness interfered with my understanding what was being said. And that was way back when TV news was real news and the TV news reporters were not bent on entertaining us with witticisms and smirks in between juicy tid-bits about celebrities.

But I pass the TV throughout the day and note what is on the screen, even if I could hear, I wouldn't watch that sleazy stuff.

Of course, I guess that shouldn't surprise me, after watching traffic slowdowns on the southbound freeway so bloodthirsty motorists can get a good gander at the bloody accident on the nortbound side as they inch by. Seems to be the nature of the human beast, but to my mind, nothing to be proud about.

A ways back the "Tabloid" type papers, some of them, gloated over scandals and "love nest" news, while the rest of the media was a bit more circumspect.

But TV has it all over the printed page, all the scandal is in full color, live and breathing. And the film clips are shown over and over again.

We seem to ignore the bad things happening in our own country, things we could address and do something to ease the load on the unfortunate folks that would make a life if they got a bit of help. Makes me ashamed that I didn't do volunteer work when I was not so crippled up, now about all I can do is shake my head, point a finger and moan about what is wrong, and once in a while, coming up with a suggestion.

Guess it all started with TV going to "infomercials," remember them ? Now all the networks are deeply into INFOTAINMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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