Well, you're on the wrong planet, man!
Case in point...
I tuned in to "Times NOW" and "India TV" the other day, at prime-time, to see if there was any news coming out of that bubbling pot of trouble called AfPak. To my utter chagrin the idiots were running news stories (and by stories I mean those serious, overly melodramatic pieces that feel like they were directed by a Manmohan Desai wannabe) like -
a) Whether the world is going to end in 2012 (no doubt some executive producer finally saw the trailer for Roland Emmerich's latest effort at world destruction) and,
b) How the United States uses Area 51 to leverage alien technology in making spy planes and other cool stuff (no, India isn't that far behind when it comes to TV series seasons - we got the X-files back in the 90s and everything)
Needless to say, the presenters of said pieces were amateurish, but utterly earnest. The guy talking about Area 51 looked like he had just come up with the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
The world is not big enough for the shivering and cringing I wanted to do.
Then in the morning, when I had finally woken from my depressed sleep, having lost all hope, I find the interwebz choked with stories about The Daily Show and John Stewart's takedown of CNBC. Here's a comedian, doing better news than all the jokers in all the news network in all the world.
His two takedowns of CNBC are not so much comedy gold as they are... conscientious reporting! If you haven't seen them yet, crawl out from under that rock and take a gander:
Now with Jim Kramer melting down in response, and finally booking a showdown with Stewart on his own turf this is simultaneously must-see entertainment TV and perhaps the most relevant debate in the news media right now about the financial crisis. The question is simple: (and I riff on that movie I so badly want to see that the Indian censors won't ever let me): Who reports on the reporters?
So there you are folks... lesson for the day: for your news, go to Comedy Central. For comedy front and center, go to any darn news channel!
Oh, and don't miss the Kramer vs Stewart showdown (I'll be sure to post the linky here)
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