News of the World or Fashion Statement?

A new line has been crossed blurring what is supposed to be a source of news and unbiased reporting and the ever present and truly all-powerful commerce. Back in the day Edward R. Murrow and his kind balked at blending the news with anything else. There was a sense that democracy was built upon an informed populous making it at least difficult for the powers that be to get away with things which were for the good of the few and the powerful and not the many and the deserving.
There is a great line from the play “Inherit the Wind”. A cynical newspaper reporter says the job of good journalism is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. It is more difficult to do this if you are worried about the bottom line. So, in the grand tradition of journalistic integrity the Cable News Network, better known as CNN, now makes it possible, with a few clicks of your mouse, to buy t-shirts printed up with the headlines from their website. The r.p.m.’s recorded as Mr. Murrow spins in his grave if harnessed on a turbine could light up the eastern seaboard as well as recharge my iPod for as long as I live. (Okay, so I threw a little something in just for me. Is that so bad?) This may not be a sign of the apocalypse or even an indication that we can no longer trust all news organizations. But, it’s darn close.
The next question I have to ask is: Who wants these t-shirts? Here are a few of the headlines available as I look at the website: “Pacing man stuck 41 hours in elevator”, “Synchronized swimmers faint in unison”, “Blind man grabs, pummels intruder” and “Rep calls workers ‘illiterate peasants’”. I’ll admit, the one about the synchronized swimmers is a bit of a giggle, but that doesn’t mean I want it emblazoned across my chest as I walk around the supermarket.
Whatever happened to the good old days? Remember when the smiley face populated many a t-shirt? This was long before it became an icon for the shameless greed of a certain retail establishment, which reported a profit of $12,731,000,000. No, my finger did not get stuck on the zero key on my computer. That is what Fortune magazine reported. It is not just what they brought in. It is the PROFIT even after they paid their C.E.O. an obscene amount of money which he and the six generations to follow him could not spend on anything but vile excess.
Back to CNN’s t-shirts. If we are going to trivialize the news, which often trivializes people’s pain and suffering, why not go whole hog? The Time-Warner Corporation (which is a distant 48 places behind the smiley face behemoth on the Fortune 500 list, making a measly profit of 4,387,000,000) could use a profit booster. They could use the headlines to make a comedy show with the headlines as the inspiration for the humor. For example: Pacing man stuck 41 hours in elevator suddenly realizes he was in his closet all along and feels most embarrassed for all the 911 calls he made. Synchronized swimmers faint in unison is a four second sight gag. Blind man grabs, pummels intruder and when police arrive they find a bruised, disheveled and disoriented UPS guy and a red faced blind man. Rep, meaning a state representative duly elected to the state house of Colorado, calls workers ‘illiterate peasants’ recants statement when he realizes just because he can’t read the language they use doesn’t make them illiterate, but rather, it just makes him an idiot.
The frequently asked questions page on the CNN website pertaining to the t-shirts proudly states, “With CNN Shirts you can wear the news.” They fail to say it would be much cheaper to fold this very issue of the Daily Globe into one of those Admiral Lord Nelson hats and wear that, than to spend fifteen bucks on a “high quality American Apparel t-shirt” sporting the words “Baby falls twenty feet onto postal worker.”
Here is, hands down, the most pathetic frequently asked questions I have read on any computer screen: “I took my CNN shirt on vacation and I have great pictures. Where can I send them?” I swear that is word for word off the website. You can look for yourself (http://www.cnn.com/tshirt/faq/). As for where he can send it I would have to suggest the level of purgatory in which people are forced to watch vacation slide shows for eternity.