CNN: Culture War Profiteer
I haven’t said anything about the Don Imus flap because truly enough has been said already.
But I can’t help but marvel at news outfits like CNN, whose shameless flogging of this controversy is so hypocritical in light of their own Imus-like talking heads, Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace. It’s just a matter of time before the karmic wheel turns and CNN finds itself in the hot seat over a Beck comment (amazingly, calling Hillary Clinton “a stereotypical bitch” or Rosie O’Donnell “a fat witch” hasn’t done it yet.).
CNN has been sucking the life out of this story for three days and I think I know why. The mainstream media is always grateful when a “culture war” story like this comes along, because in these polarizing times, they desperately need an opportunity to cover a juicy current event in which it doesn’t appear they are choosing sides. Unlike, say, covering Washington scandals such as “Attorney-gate” and “Plame-gate,” which inevitably spark claims of biased coverage from the right and left (no matter how unfounded), reporting what stupid comment a bigot with a microphone made is like free candy. They get to put the full muscle of their 24-hour programming behind this story and pretend they are doing their job of informing the American viewer, when in fact they are doing nothing of the kind. They are keeping the story alive because it’s the only kind of story they can cover where someone isn’t calling for their head on a platter.
CNN is the ultimate culture-war profiteer, but it isn’t the only one. Every time a news outlet hires a flame-throwing big mouth like Glenn Beck, books Ann Coulter, or stokes the fires of a fake controversy like the “War on Christmas,” they are profiting from the culture wars they themselves have created.
The over-analysis of hateful remarks by public figures like Mel Gibson and Isaiah Washington is culture war profiteering, not because what these people said is okay (it’s not), but because once the final public outrage and inevitable mea culpas are finished, it’s time to move on, people, except we never do. How many times have we heard that “we need to have a national dialogue about xyz” (fill in the blank: race, misogyny, homophobia, etc.)?
Haven’t we already had these conversations? Don’t we all agree that these things are bad and you should not do them? And if you do, you will be punished?
These stories seem to take on a life of their own, but they don’t. They are endlessly flogged by a media desperately at sea about its mission and purpose in the age of the internet.