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Michael Vick & CNN Team to Boost Idiocy RatesI've finished my transition back into the real world. Go ahead, stop holding your breath. I know you've been anticipating this for months. So how many of you check out cnn.com on a regular basis? I usually don't but someone called my attention to one of their outrageous breaking news alerts about something mundane like Whoopi Goldberg joining The View, so I headed over. I spotted a story on Michael Vick in the headlines and took a gander only to happen upon one of the most troubling things that I've seen in months: bullet point summaries.
Has anyone else noticed this?? Why doesn't CNN just slap us around, pass out dunce caps and call it a day? I understand that we live in an instant gratification, ADHD, fast-food society, and that we are literally growing dumber by the minute but can't we at least rely upon news organizations to, I don't know, put forth a modicum of effort to keep us not only informed but literate? Is that so much to ask? It's not as if AP and Reuters were beating us down with prose from honors English or complicated language from a PhD dissertation on the Bundle Theory. Their articles are, at most, 180 words, broken down into five, two-sentence paragraphs that are written at a fourth grade level. Take, for instance, this 104-word story about a Serbian man eaten by bears at a beer festival...
Once you discount the time you spend laughing, it takes about 45 seconds to read, comprehend and move on. There are no monosyllabic words to stand in your way. No compound sentences. No string of thoughts more complex than "See Dick with no protection. See Jane with an infection." I'd like to think Reuters was doing us enough favors but apparently not. We need highlights.
I have to admit some surprise at not seeing "Devoured man must've been an idiot" as the fourth highlight. In the coming weeks, I anticipate another tragic article where some schmo laments falling literacy rates and the United States placing 13th in the "educated nations game" and, strategically placed in the upper-right hand corner, will be CNN's bullets explaining the rising idiocy rate in 40 words or less while directly contributing to the problem. I suppose the only irony to all of this is that the genius that thought up this plan likely proposed his ideas via power point - the only form of expression for braindead, communication addled business executives.
And before I forget, you may now realize that the title of this post had nothing to do with anything at all. I just figured I'd jump onto the hate wagon with the hip kids since I'm so behind the curve. But while we're on the topic, it's entirely too bizarre, not to mention quite unnerving, that the masses want Vick to catch a shank in the prison yard for breeding and killing animals when, if he'd raped a girl or been a partied to a murder, it'd be forgive and forget by Christmas... Now excuse me while I dig out my Ray Lewis jersey and do a rousing squirrel dance for the upcoming NFL season on the lawn.  Posted at August 27, 2007 2:16 PM Permalink • Filed under: NFL , Shallow Observations |
God bless American journalism.
Comments (15): Michael Vick & CNN Team to Boost Idiocy Rates
Craig
August 27, 2007 3:05 PM
I find the CNN highlights appalling as well. It isn't as if anything on there is all that difficult to comprehend.
One thing that I'm not completely clear on based on the article or bullet points about the man in the bear cage is this: Was the beer festival at the zoo? Because that just seems like this was inevitable. It was just a matter of filling in the blank with the correct animal.
No string of thoughts more complex than "See Dick with no protection. See Jane with an infection." Look at you, discussing literacy and idiocy at CNN, but still taking the time to explain the transmission of diseases to us. Are you having to do PSAs as part of some sort of probation?
Your thoughts on Vick (which were true...and sad) got me thinking about something else. Why is it that the Bengals get all sorts of crap about their team's off the field behavior, but it didn't seem to matter when the Ravens had a player who was convicted of trying to distribute cocaine and a player who was involved in (at the least) covering up murder?
Anderson
August 27, 2007 3:14 PM
I think you should run out ahead of the band and the team on Saturday, do the squirrel dance in the middle of the field, and then run off to the sidelines like nothing happened.
Eric
August 27, 2007 3:23 PM
I'm sorry - I'm sure this was a great blog, but I just don't feel the need to read THAT much!
Perhaps, I don't know, you could summarize using spherical shapes and incomplete sentences?
Sincerely,
America's Cumulative IQ
AJ
August 27, 2007 4:14 PM
lol After he gets out prison, Vick will spend the next 10 years playing golf with OJ, stealing direct tv and throwing his clubs at helicopters :)
hadrian
August 27, 2007 5:11 PM
The sad thing isn't even that CNN is enabling dumb asses everywhere, it's that there are people out there actually dependent on those bullets to make it through each article. They're probably the same dummies that petitioned CNN to make the changes.
Castro
August 27, 2007 10:09 PM
Why is ESPN reacting like we just found out about the Vick thing? We've got endless coverage ALL DAY, it's all they can talk about in the pre-season game tonight. NEWSFLASH: This has been coming for MONTHS!
Toxic
August 28, 2007 7:17 AM
"honors English"
Tut tut ;¬)
Britton
August 28, 2007 2:48 PM
See Toxic, these Americans need a number of classes with various levels of skill to master something we do naturally :-)
Eric
August 28, 2007 2:55 PM
Right - because there are NO English people who speak indecipherably. Especially in the North!
Toxic
August 29, 2007 6:45 AM
Nah then lad, happen I'll be takin nowt from the likes of thee about us from up t'North ;¬)
Eric
August 29, 2007 9:57 AM
Yeah...what he said.
YoBimbo
August 30, 2007 12:54 PM
Not to get all granola on you or anything, and I'm gnawing on a chicken leg as I type this (okay, not literally. shut up.) But I thought a friend of mine made an interesting point about the Vick thing:
"This Michael Vick stuff is weird. Don't we support massive institutionalized, government-subsidized animal-breeding, raising and killing every day? Oh, right, Who cares? Or, It's part of our culture. Sounds like Vick's supporters. And you think all these suddenly righteous sports reporters would care if Vick had been killing cats? Or, uh, hitting his wife? This story is good, because animal cruelty never gets so much positive press and attention, but you gotta wonder about the hypocrisy."
As for literacy, I blame US Today and their fucking charts. That's who slipperied up the slope. That and Hooked on Phonics. And texting. And feminism. And Karl Rove. And, of course, Michael Vick.
YoBimbo
August 30, 2007 12:57 PM
Oh yeah... And this:
Animal Cruelty Isn't Judged on a Level Playing Field, by Courtland Milloy. "Too bad for Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick that people like me love dogs more than cows. Or, to put it another way, I prefer the taste of Angus and Hereford to Rottweiler and pit bull. Otherwise, the federal agents who recently charged Vick with dogfighting would have to arrest nearly all of us for participating in far worse acts of animal cruelty."
Erik
September 1, 2007 10:07 PM
I'm late on this one...didn't realize you were posting new stuff again. I'm a vegetarian, so I am not a fan of killing any animal. That said, I do wear leather gear when I ride and buy leather shoes. Hypocrisy, maybe, but I look at it as honoring the animal, rather than consuming it. Food is feces in 24 hours, but some of my leather shoes are ten years old. Anyway, abusing animals is every bit as heinous as abusing people. What really raises my sympathies is the animals' inherent connection to nature, meaning that animal s fill a natural role. People don't play by those rules, and often times behave worse than any animal, so it is more difficult to sympathize. Our species gave the world Attila the Hun, Hitler, various acts genocide, nuclear proliferation, reality TV, etc, and so on. For every Mother Teresa there are a thousand greedy, selfish shits running around.
When you get right down to it, it's easier to respect a dog than it is most people.
Ron Franscell
September 4, 2007 1:55 PM
Whoopi seems awfully inarticulate, but she also seems rather racist in her views. By defending the admitted felon Michael Vick as merely doing something that folks like him do every day in their rural, Southern culture where "this is not questioned," she rushed to defend Vick ... oh, who happens to be black. She rushed to tell (mostly) white folks that it's just a black thing.
She overlooks the fact that Vick and his pals went to great lengths to keep things hidden and under wraps. Why? Because they KNEW it was against the law! Dog-fighters KNOW it's illegal to fight, abuse and kill dogs, as well as to gamble on the fights ... which (as Vick and his buddies did) are usually held secretly. Those guys cannot possibly make a defense that they "was just doin' what we does here in the South."
The race to defend was rather abrupt and while I don't think Whoopi is necessarily a deep-thinker, she should have realized she was defending a true criminal ... who happens to be black.