After the first week of half-heartedly keeping up with the Olympics I’ve got the drive of a jellyfish to watch this week’s athletic feats [and feets]. Is it just me or do they just have too many olympic events? Do they have to have so many side stories and announcers that are so lame that you just can’t watch more than a few hours of athletics in combination of some of the mind numbing drivel that comes out of their mouths? I imagine that the human interest angle of the Olympics is important now due to several reasons:
- Sesame Street – The Children’s Television Workshop has been putting together short video montages since MTV was the twinkle in Satan’s eye (that’s a joke, not a Rock is from the devil comment).
- MTV – We’ve been having short videos played to use for several decades now. We can’t handle an hour long televised event unless the commercials are so stellar that we actually watch the event for the commercials (see: Super Bowel Sunday)
- The Women of Wisteria Lane – If there’s no drama involved wherein scandals, knee surgeries, single parents with one kidney who nearly died of a gangreen in their pinky-toes from the Olympics in 1611 then the Olympics are just not exciting enough.
- CNN – OK, so this ‘news network’ is more like a snooze network. We’re bombarded by twenty-four hour television news feeds which are loaded with human interest stories because gosh darn it: there is not enough really critical news to cover. This is also why the media spent thousands of man hours researching Dick Cheney’s hunting accident.
- Dick Cheney’s Hunting Accident – If you’re going to compete with the media frenzy that is the walking medical unit of our Vice President of the United States you have to have something more attention grabbing than ice prancing. 11 out of 8 guys who are flipping through the channels are going to see a man that they presume is homosexual lifting up a woman who’s not as naked as her skin tone outfit initially indicates and keep going until they see that someone that is in a sub-level-power has had an accident with a gun. Who hasn’t had an accident with a gun? Or who hasn’t been related via six degrees of separation to a person who had an accident with Kevin Bacon’s gun?
Clearly the Uh-lympics should be amazing, but I’m amazed by the coverage being so heavy in hours yet so light in content.