Strut...

When You Strut...You Fall!

I like watching the local news from time to time and when I am going to be on the road for work, especially like the local weather. This past week, I didn’t really catch any actual news shows, yet the networks version of what ‘news’ is still seemed to be shoved down my throat. During almost every commercial, every news break, every moment that was at their disposal, Oscar Pistorius and Robin Roberts were both equally shoved in my face.

Now, before the comments (laugh...) start flowing, I like Robin Roberts. I don’t watch GMA, but I have seen enough of her on other shows and in ‘the news’ to have great respect for her as journalist, and great compassion and respect for her as a human being. I also respected and admired Oscar until recently and posted about him a couple of times previously on FH. I am not sure what I think about him today, there is still so much of the story still untold.

Being labeled a hero is a tricky thing. Sometimes, people are able to rise to greet the title, but most often, as human beings, it is something almost impossible to maintain. I am not one who believes heroes are about any one skill or act of achievement. To me, true heroes should be granted their status only for how they treat and help their fellow man. I am not someone who thinks child molesters are not so because they are Kings of Pop, serial adulators should not be granted immunity because they can hit a ball in a hole. Dopers and repeat liars are not absolved because they have done good work for cancer. Life does not work this way, yet the title of hero, often has the public, and the hero themselves, questioning whether the laws of the land should really apply to those at the top of the mountain.

Of course I know there is a difference between a woman fighting her way back from cancer and an athlete shooting his model girlfriend. My question is whether television news does? Network News is in a transitional phase, not knowing whether to begin there nightly broadcasts with the atrocities of war, or the newest atrocities from the Kardashian family. I am not sure the ‘news’ knows there is a difference between Robin Roberts, Oscar Pistorius, Kim Kardashian or Anthony Wiener because regardless of story, their aim is to exploit it. CNN was so confused over what actual news was they had to start a CNN headline news in order to continue Kardashian coverage with the interruption of the pain of world strife.

Like the snow storm on the East Coast last week, anything titillating, stimulating or able to compete with the infighting between the (pick a State...) Housewives is worth reporting to death. This over reporting of everything has very few redeeming qualities. Sure, it quickened Paris Hilton’s face out of the spotlight, but only to replace it with Lindsay or some other talent challenged ‘celebrity’.

I suppose if I had to choose which story to have shoved down my throat, I would rather have the good news of Robin Roberts returning to work rather than Lohan’s recent dress borrowing incident covered from every vantage point. The point is, I would rather have neither. Although I do not live in Boston, my news stems from there and in Boston, they like to interrupt regular programming for every minor burp and fart they can possibly muster, I guess in order to justify all the salaries for the far too many faces they have covering the news.

You can’t really blame the subjects, many of them would just as soon not have all the attention. I read a quote from Robin Roberts earlier this week commenting on her hesitation with all the hoopla surrounding her return with a quote from her mother that ‘If you strut, you fall’. I loved Robin for this quote as it sums up exactly why the local news is currently so fucked. They have lost their ability to see, or care about the difference between a strut, and a fall. They stick a camera in front of the one strutting just waiting and hoping they will fall on their ass. They do the same with whomever is falling, hoping to catch whether they will rise to strut once again. They do this not because it is ‘news’, not because it is of any importance. They do this, because we, have taught them we will watch.