The monster that ate entertainment

Today, CNN.com entered into a level of meta-irony that is so self-consuming, it threatens to actually render a rift in the time space continuum. see also: ouroboros

The article starts out strong, with a recent quote from novelist Stephen King:

The news media, he observed, is being overwhelmed by entertainment gossip. “[I told ‘Nightline,’] ‘You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you’re missing the whole fox hunt.’ Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear.

“And yet you get this coverage of who’s gonna get custody of Britney’s kids? … You’ve got these things going on … that could affect all of us, and instead, you see a lot of this back-fence gossip.”

Certainly a valid observation, one that could even be deemed newsworthy.

So, after such a strong setup, what does CNN do? They do exactly what a major international news organization should do: They launch into a masterpiece of investigative journalism; a studied, reasoned analysis of the most critical news stories of the year that were glossed over in favor of meaningless entertainment news.

Oh. Wait. That didn’t happen.

Actually, what they did was this:

Certainly Spears and Lohan — and Paris Hilton, and Anna Nicole Smith, and down the list to Tila Tequila — were capable of sucking all the oxygen out of the media room in 2007, all of the water out of the office water cooler.

Indeed, forget about hard news stories. Consider the entertainment stories that were overshadowed by Spears, Lohan and Hilton:

Yeah, forget about those hard news stories. Who needs those? Government sanctioned torture? Intentional destruction of videotapes that document that torture? The complete abolition of habeus corpus? The U.S. supported military junta in Burma massacring Buddhist monks? Genocide in Darfur? That stuff is so … depressing.

Instead, consider this: DUMBLEDORE IS GAY.

!!!!!!

Huh? What?

Betcha didn’t know that, did you? Why? Because the media is too busy reporting on Britney’s latest baby mama drama, instead of telling you the truth about what’s really going on in the world.

Here’s another one: “The Sopranos” aired their last episode.

WHAT?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! WHY WASN’T I TOLD?!!!!

This is an outrage! “The Sopranos” is one of the finest television shows in the history of the medium! And it’s over? Just like that? Without even the slightest fanfare? What’s next … cancelling “The Cosby Show”?

This is an open letter to the mainstream media: In 2008, America demands a complete return to responsible journalism. No longer will we support media outlets that clog the public airwaves — OUR airwaves — with empty entertainment stories.

In this new year, we want to hear the real news, the hard news that affects our lives in substantive ways.

Hear our cry, mainstream media! We don’t want more stories about Lindsay Lohan’s DUI, or Britney Spears’ drug problems!

No! We want the real stories, like about Ty Pennington’s DUI, or that guy from the 2nd season of The Bachelor’s drug problems. What was his name? Aaron, or Andrew, or …

See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about! The media was so busy filling my TV and my Internet with stories about Paris Hilton’s jail time, that I can’t even remember The Bachelor’s name. And I watched that show EVERY WEEK!

Alright, enough of this. I gotta go watch “Family Matters”. That Urkel is so funny!

In the old days, one might see an interesting gentleman walking down the street and wonder, “What could be going through that fella’s head right about now?”

Probably something about marmalade, or pipe tobacco, or possibly thoughts of a lovely music box which he has just purchased for a girl he is courting.

Or, if one was on the seedy side of town, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to wonder if that gentleman was thinking about liquor, or backgammon, or possibly even ladies undergarments.

Today, thanks to the wonders of Google, we can actually peer — if only for a second — into the minds of our fellow men. A man’s Google search provides a glimpse into his soul. What troubles him? What interests him? What arouses his curiosity?

As a dedicated student of human nature, I often peruse the search statistics for this site to learn what brings people here. Often visitors arrive looking for “george bush video” or “bush mistakes” or “anti-bush video”.

That means, as I browse the site, I am having a communal experience with other like-minded individuals all around the world. We are all on hategun, and we are all thinking the same thing: George Bush is a douchebag. It’s almost as if we form a virtual super-brain of liberal political thought. I have always found comfort in that.

Until today.

What makes today different? Today is the day that a visitor from Chicago (Go Bears!) arrived through a Google search for “inserting salamander into vagina“.

Now, I like salamanders. And Lord knows I like vaginas. But somehow, it never occurred to me to combine the two. Both are cute and cuddly and moist, yet each has always occupied different parts of my brain:

1. Amphibious quadropeds over here.
2. Female genitalia over there.

Now I have to wonder: is our virtual super-brain really thinking about the global implications of American hegemony? Or is it instead thinking about how to cram an amphibian up a girl’s cooter?

Maybe I’m the only one concerned with the dangerous proliferation of political rhetoric, and all of you are off in some weird, perverted alternate universe of human-salamander love trysts. Maybe the evangelicals are right. Maybe legalizing gay marriage really does open the door to ungodly unions of man and beast.

Oh Lord, what have I done?! There’s no turning back now! We’ve entered a dark time of sexual perversity. Men and yaks! Women and wombats! Orgies of children and sea monkeys! Where will it end, God, where will it END?!!!

Oh.

Wait.

It just did.

Another Google search has just appeared in the site statistics. And suddenly, I feel calm again. At peace. The world is as it should be.

Why? Because someone just landed here searching Google for “human hairy balls“.

Not just any hairy balls, mind you. Human hairy balls. As in, “Show me the testicles of homo sapiens, and no others.”

Don’t show me sheep nuts. Don’t show me a camel sack. Don’t even show me human balls unnaturally shorn of their glorious, wiry locks. No! Show me only human, hairy, God-fearing, red-blooded, American balls.

At least one among us is primarily thinking about human hairy balls. But that’s not so far from what the rest of us are thinking: George Bush is a dick.

And so equilibrium returns to the hategun global super-brain.

UPDATE: Extra! Extra! This just in! Hategun comes up #1 in Google search results for “vagina eating bug“. More details as they become available …