TyG - 11/7 - Do I REALLY Need to Watch the TV News?

Or should I just pull another, heavier set of covers over my head? What does it matter? At the height of this past week’s election coverage, the lead story was “Britney Spears Divorcing ‘Fed-Ex’”; whoa, baby! What does this mean, besides that we can all expect another huge influx of “See Britney Spears Naked” spam email?

Perhaps this signifies that Florida’s Governor-elect, Charlie Crist, and the twenty-some seats that shifted from Red to Blue (warm-fuzzy moment for the Dems) are not as important to the nation’s future as the aging, mother-of-two starlet (a point that could certainly be argued – I don’t EVER want to receive spam about “See Charlie Crist Naked”).

More likely, however, is that this is a commentary on both the lack of depth of “typical” American viewers (just watch the ratings) and the changing nature of television itself; Bourdieu phrases it thus: “Our news anchors, our talk show hosts, and our sports announcers have turned into two-bit spiritual guides, representatives of middle-class morality” (329).

As much as I still feel left behind in a class that centers around media consumption, I doubt I’ll be adding much TV viewing time to my life; perhaps actual examples of news coverage would add to the depth of the class, especially for those of us who have “unplugged”; then again, maybe it would just add more clutter to an already-overfull agenda.