Couch Potato on a Treadmill? Kirsten & Zeinab redeem
the Boob-tube
As I’ve said before, I do my TV watching from the treadmill,
which means I watch TV when I’m at the gym. That is
another way of saying I don’t watch an awful lot of
TV. However, I’m beginning to think I may be missing
something and perhaps I should work out a bit more often.
Despite Murdoch’s Fenian bullyboys Fox News is actually
becoming compelling viewing on occasion. Long gone are the
days when it irked. It’s not that the standard of Fox
journalism has ascended from its low-rent depths. No, it’s
just that the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannitty
and that Doxy of the Right, Ann Coulter, have become so rich
and such major media figures that they actually take themselves
seriously. O’Reilly, originally a radio hack dredged
up from Voice of America and lucky to find a job when that
less-than-august institution was canned at the end of the
Cold War, found his niche at Fox and parlayed himself into
some omnipotent vox pop with the aid of his sound man, who
simply turned up the volume so Bill can shout down anyone
who isn’t a halfwit, or simply cut the guest mike. This
works like a dream against most pre-selected mealy-mouthed
liberals, but not so well on the rare occasions he runs up
against a class act like Madeleine Albright. She eats the
likes of O’Reilly for breakfast. Success breeds success
and pretty soon O’Reilly was ably supported by an even
more egregiously awful lieutenant, Sean Hannity. Any other
presenter at Fox, the remotely acceptable Shep Smith for example,
experiencing difficulty stomaching the journalistic travesties
of the O’Reilly/Hannity axis, soon found themselves
back on the road in the nobler but much less remunerative
role of reporter. Even that self-serving publicity hound Geraldo
at battlefront New Orleans lost patience with the political
bias of our benighted boyos back in the studio.
Things really started taking a comic turn when O’Reilly
started threatening callers to the “No-spin Zone”
that he’d set Fox Security on them if they didn’t
show sufficient respect. “We know where you live”,
he told viewers, “anything untoward” and you’ll
receive a little visit. You will be held accountable”,
he warned darkly. Sure enough a caller who’d called
and who’d had the temerity of mentioning a hated rival
presenter started receiving menacing calls from Fox Security.
Fox’s program Hannity & Colmes, designed to show
the channel’s “balanced” reporting, involves
Hannity misrepresenting and shouting down Democrats while
the nice but nerdy Alan Colmes reasons sweetly with rabid
Bushites. The all-time high came this August when Democratic
strategist and blogger Kirsten Powers stood in for Alan Colmes.
Hannity kicked off the show by attempting to browbeat democrat
representative Michael Brown, who did a reasonable job holding
up his end against Hannity’s barracking. And guess who
the other guest was, sitting there hardly saying a word, with
encouraging smirk writ large while Hannity savaged Brown?
Why, none other than pampered guest and pinup of Red America,
Anne Coulter. Things changed abruptly come half-time when
Kirsten Powers seemingly appeared from nowhere and really
socked it to Coulter. “Well, if Bush is doing such a
great job, why hasn’t he killed Bin Laden?”, demanded
Powers. “Um”, said Coulter. It unravelled fast
for Coulter from that moment on. “But it’s going
swimmingly in Afghanistan”, she volunteered hopefully.
“No it isn’t,” snapped Powers continuing
her wrecking job on Coulter, who obviously didn’t expect
this kind of treatment on Fox. “You’re not letting
me get a word in”, she bleated. Smiling hopelessly and
looking around the studio in helpless amazement she was finally
reduced to appealing to Hannity to come to her rescue. “Sean,
Sean?”, she appealed desperately. But Sean had shot
his bolt, it was not his segment. The hapless Coulter was
on her own. As the horror of her situation visibly dawned
on her all she could squeak was “I’m out of here”,
she repeated. With no one to rescue her she finally made good
on her threat and wimped away.
The screen was a triptych much of the time so the viewer could
catch it all. No quarter was given. It was simply great TV.
Either the cameraman was a closet democrat and no doubt fired,
or Fox was smart enough to know great television when it sees
it. Money or politics? Tough decision, but the Dirty Digger’s
henchmen certainly know the answer to that one. Or could it
possibly be the tectonic plates of media are shifting? With
Branson giving away billions and Murdoch announcing that he
now believes in global warming something is surely afoot.
Maybe Fox News is repositioning itself? With Bush a failed
warrior duck, the house likely to go democrat any day and
the possibility of a Clinton back in the White House in a
few years, time to put out a few feelers perhaps? Times change
and business is business after all.
Poor old CNN, who started off all these partisan shouting
matches with Crossfire, now totally outclassed and nowhere
to be seen in the ratings. Serves them right for not listening
to Ted Turner. All the same, in the right wing media thug
stakes, give me Pat Buchanan & Robert Novak over Messrs.
O’Reilly & Hannity any day.
Meantime, if you want to prove that good television of merit
and substance still exists you need to switch to BBC World.
I don’t know what’s got into them but in the last
few months there’s been some great programming. BBC
usually manages to be both dull and frustrating. All I get
to see from my treadmill is endless news, with long and frequent
gaps where the ads should go and promos for programs I never
see.
First off there was a brilliant and chilling piece of investigative
journalism where a BBC reporter posing as the son of a patient
in the market for a liver transplant filmed an undercover
interview with a hospital in Northern China. His dad could
have a new liver in a couple weeks for £50,000 paid
into a Hong Kong bank. Where did the organ come from? Was
it true they came from executed criminals?
“It’s true”, said the doctor matter of factly.
Of course the executed men (quickly cremated) volunteer the
organs, a hospital administrator added. This one hospital
performs over 600 liver transplants a year each. China currently
executes more people in a year than the rest of the world
put together. There is a glut of available organs before any
major national holiday as the number of mass public executions
shoot up for reasons of “social stability”, it
was explained. Not a moral dilemma anyone in need of an organ
transplant should be faced with I’d say.
Then, God Bless her, there is the comely and highly accomplished
Zeinab Badawi.
A forty-something year old Oxford-educated presenter, born
in the Sudan but lived in the UK since age two, Badawi is
the whip-smart pinup for British multiculturalism and has
become the point woman for a whole slew of first rate BBC
programs. She’s stood in very effectively on “Hard
Talk”, she ably moderates “The Peacemakers”
and has recently interviewed Ramos-Horta and the Dalai Lama.
She also moderated a compelling series of programs from BBC
Ulster where IRA and UDA men met their victims or their families,
presided over by Bishop Desmond Tutu. For once Bishop Tutu
wasn’t doing his Alistair Syms impersonation and the
true metal of the man who had played such a key role in the
transition from Apartheid was very apparent. It wasn’t
about reconciliation and forgiveness, though that was there
in quite a few cases, it was the understanding that came from
hearing the other side of the story that was so compelling.
Understanding yes, but forgiveness could be left to God some
still felt.
What with interesting animal programs on Discovery and National
Geographic, plus the likes of Kirsten Powers leavening Fox
News and Zeinab Badawi gracing some half decent programming
on BBC I think I might be in danger of becoming fitter than
I’ve been in long while.
