Sunday, February 17, 2008

today : Watching The World


I have been watching a lot of CNN recently. Mainly The Situation Room, checking on the Primaries and trying to count the number of times they tell you that they are the best political team on television, and the number of that team whose names suggest they would make good WWE wrestlers (Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash to start).

They have Jack Cafferty, whom is obviously not a real person, as he is referred to as a file. Whenever he talks it is presented as The Cafferty file, which I guess is similar to a Philips screwdriver.

Anyway, I didn't set out to talk about the faux Minority Report pointed finger operated video presentations, or the fact that one of them seems to be in the charge of a 19 year old girl from Berkshire who has acquired one of those gap year mid-atlantic accents. Or even the overly aggressive music that I am convinced was made by or copied from a little known album track by Einsturzende Neubaten or The Young Gods.

The thing about CNN, when you watch it in the UK, is that it really puts you in your place. Y'see I don't really get to see the real CNN, but, in amongst the endless advertisments for CNN and the occasional hotel, I get CNN World. What it tells me is that my country is just another part of the world, and not even an especially important one.

The evening news either comes from Atlanta or Hong Kong. Personally I prefer the Hong Kong one because of Kristy Lu Stout being one of the best looking news anchors in the world, but the point is that 'the rest of the world', according to CNN is not really Europe. I wonder if this is to do with the fact that CNN doesn't want to step on the toes of the BBC in providing english language news in markets close to those covered by the Beeb. Anyway, the news often misses Europe altogether. I guess it should be so in a way. There are way more people in China, Indonesia and India than in Europe, so why should what happen on my doorstep really count?

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