It looks like CNN was successful in convincing the government that it’s okay for cameramen and reporters to swarm the corpse-recovery effort going on in New Orleans and other Katrina-stricken towns.
With this as precedent, I guess it would be okay for me to head out to Martha’s Vineyard and stalk veteran journalist Walter Cronkite and follow him around until he shuffles off this mortal coil we call life.
You know the man goes sailing almost constantly, right? Despite being shakier than Kirk Douglas behind the wheel of his 2005 Crashmobile, the man’s at the tiller and reading the waves like an upside-down teleprompter.
Well, it’s only a matter of time before the old coot makes a mistake and falls overboard. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but I’ll guarantee you that he’s going to end up on Poseidon’s Shortlist soon enough.
Life jacket? HAH! When has a news anchor ever worn orange in the field?
With a “That’s the way it is” he sinks below the surface and drowns. He bloats, surfaces, and seagulls pick out his eyeballs and tear meat from his carcass.
Days later, his ravaged corpse washes ashore at the Kennedy Compound.
And I’m there. Filming every moment of it. Filling chip after chip and loading it to my website while I wait for waltercronkitecorpse.com to propagate through DNS.
But, hey, CNN thinks that’s okay. Because the voyeuristic gathering of video from scenes of horrific tragedy without regard to how it might shock the audience or derange the families of the dead is perfectly fine.
The Founding Fathers thought of that when they crafted the First Amendment, you know. How else would Poor Richard’s Almanac gotten exclusive wood-carvings of Crispus Attucks’ shot-out face from the Boston Massacre otherwise?
Oh, and isn’t there video from the shuttle, too? I mean, are we to believe that NASA can make Tang and Velcro, but can’t make a camera that runs despite horrific temperatures and G-forces? Then what do they have mounted on Pioneer and the Voyagers… Kodak Brownies? Ektras? Polaroids that a robot-arm has to shake a few times to get them to develop evenly?
Even Miles O’Brien would object to that one, seeing as how he was buddy-buddy with most of those seven astronauts. But being a journalist, you have to be objective and distance yourself from the personal side of the story, and the show must go on (in between the commercials).
Let’s check the score, shall we?
Hundreds of ordinary people’s corpses left to rot in attics, porches, and apartments – okay.
Seven astronauts – not okay, because it might shock the families.
One veteran reporter who’s wife is already dead – most certainly out.
And let’s go back a few weeks… what if singer Mark Cohn hadn’t have had his skull creased by the bullet in Denver during that carjacking attempt? What if, instead, he’d have gotten his brains blown out through his face, all over the inside of the windshield?
Well, besides greatly reducing the chop-value of his car, what would a network like ABC have done with that video? Shown it?
Yeah, with Cohn’s wife Elizabeth Vargas acting as a fill-in anchor now and then to take the place of Peter Jennings, that would have flown over nicely. Might as well size the anchor chair for Charlie Gibson’s ass while Elizabeth is fitted with a vest that straps in the back.
Never mind those guys smashing up jewelry stores and robbing them, there’s a worse breed looter prowling the streets of New Orleans. It’s called a Newslooter, and it’s there to steal the most valuable and precious thing in that swamped city: dignity.