CNN Requiem

The bullies finally won.

by Joey Sweeney

If you're like me, at a certain point last summer you couldn't bear not knowing anymore and started to tune in regularly to Fox News. Which quickly, for many, turned into a lesson in being unable not to bear that which is unbearable. Oh, and those were hopeful times: We thought we were all so smart, tuning in to the enemy network to see how exactly they were warping American minds. To fight the enemy, you must sing his song, we said.

And so we sang. For months and months, we cackled and cawed. "Who the fuck would take Sean Hannity seriously?" we asked our girlfriends and boyfriends, cuddling close in the kitschy blue glow of mainstream ignorance. "Is Bill O'Reilly really so uptight that he's substituting a loofah for a dildo?" we joked in the taverns that are now our only places of solace in a world gone insane twice over.

So, yes, we watched Fox. As well as CNN, but the fix was already in. After a while, it wasn't so much that Fox was calling the shots as that it was dictating the tempo, which frankly always felt to me like breakneck-bpm techno tweaking out all us ravers. Because who couldn't resist waving glow sticks in the weeds for a little while? And by the time the election had left anyone with a brain beaten and bruised, if we didn't stop watching the news altogether, we limped back to CNN.

Bad things happened while we were gone. Because of our little fact-finding mission in the crystal meth backwoods of America with Fox, CNN had started getting whomped in the ratings — like so many other things these days, unthinkable just a few years ago. Heads rolled, a new president was sworn in (only at CNN, silly), and before we knew it we had to deal with yet another cosmic bummer: There was a new CNN that was now openly competing with Fox, whose whole kill-'em-with-craziness gambit officially worked.

So far, the changes have been swift. Crossfire: thankfully, gone, and along with it, the twerp with the bow tie (let's just not say his name so this won't show up when he Googles himself), so shamefully and publicly disemboweled by Jon Stewart. Also gone is The Capital Gang, Bob Novak's eyebrows finally forced somewhat underground, and Inside Politics is headed for the door.

And you're right: Good riddance. But this was just the calm before the storm. And black intimations of The New CNN are everywhere. Suddenly, Lou Dobbs has an opinion — about everything! And wow, he's kind of a dick, too! Bored with that? Click over to CNN Headline News, and you'll do a Fox double take: Lost white women and children lead while the Downing Street Memo (remember that? Of course you don't!) only conjures memories of the last commercial you saw. It had a snuggly bear! Aruba, Jamaica, oooooh I wanna take ya. Meanwhille, evening talking head Nancy Grace (a cross between two SNL skits: "Church Lady" and "Marsha Marsha Marsha") literally has fangs, and she feasts, oh does she ever feast, on the blood of her little lost white lambs. And after a while, you just turn the TV off altogether. It wasn't that the old CNN was ever great — save for that gorgeous Anderson Cooper — it was just that it was the devil we knew. The devil we don't is just around the corner.

Plus … TV/Tivo Tips! *** Special Live8 Edition! ***
June 30-July 13

Live Aid: The Day The Music Changed The World
Thu., June 30, 8:30 p.m., PBS
At press time we were unable to ascertain exactly which part of this program's title was supposed to be in air quotes.

MTV/VH1 Live8
Sat., July 2, Noon, MTV and VH1
Landon breaks into tears and finally comes out of the closet during Dave Matthews' performance; Sway interviews Lindsay Lohan, who's interviewing a disembodied extended belly; and the cast of Best Week Ever donate their old Lewinsky jokes to starving orphans.

Live8: A Worldwide Concert Event
Sat., July 2, 8 p.m., WPVI-6
Gary Papa, Lisa Thomas-Laury and Mark Gardner get down with the Kaiser Chiefs.

Live 8 Recap
Sat., July 2, 11 p.m., MTV
"Hi, this is John Norris with MTV, and I'm still not going to tell you what's up with my hair. I am, however, in a helicopter high above the City of Brotherly Love, where the local pilot has been so kind to take me on a tour of other great Philadelphia shames. So far, I've seen the spot where Mumia Abu-Jamal may or may not have shot police officer Daniel Faulkner, and right now, we're just a few blocks away from Osage Avenue. All of this, of course, is just to kill time until we figure out which stretch SUV we're going to follow out of here and straight up the turnpike as this historic and wonderful city burns to the ground as a sad result of ineffective leadership and abysmal planning. Back to you, Sway!"