Reality Invades US Newsrooms. posted by Richard Seymour

There really is no better way to describe it. What were once comfy, well-lit, made-up, insular lacunae of the unreal have been inundated, assailed, traumatised by deadly irruptions of hardcore reality - usually conveyed by reporters on the ground. Jack Shafer first noticed this alarming tendency in an article for Slate last week. For instance, CNN's Anderson Cooper had to shove a a smelly, rat-eaten corpse down Senator Mary Landrieu's throat, after she had spent precious air time kissing the arses of the President, the former President, my fellow Senators, Congress etc etc. Lately, Mr Cooper has taken to kicking Trent Lott around (see here), and is apparently on something of a roll. Senator Landrieu, by a similar token, has taken to threatening to punch the President.


Senator Landrieu: may punch paper bag.

Meanwhile, NPR tore Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff's shirt off (see what I did there?) in an unusually aggressive radio interview. Chertoff tried his usual evasions, explaining that no one could have predicted this, it was all unforeseen, we're doing our very best - and besides, what are you doing to assist the war on terror? The interviewer was having none of it.


Chertoff, shirt on.

Right-wing bores like David Brooks of the New York Times are letting their shame and disgust hang out, while CBS allowed their silver-haired Bob Shieffer to 'face the nation' with a mordant and bilious tongue. Joe Scarborough from MSNBC contrasted the "ruthlessly efficient" handling of previous hurricanes to this sullen non-effort. And CNN has noticed the growing distance between what it's on-the-ground reporters say, and what the Bush administration is claiming.

Even Fox News, the cynical, blustery, swaggering hard man of American rightist television, has experienced a freak accident of humanity (click here to watch video) when Geraldo Rivera (I shit you not) and Shep Smith broke down during interviews live from the scene with Sean Hannity, who was trying to spin it his own way from the studio. Rivera, of course, was hopeless - he emoted, he babbled, he furrowed his brow in a vain attempt to understand the situation, he reeled back and forth, looked dazed, cuddled two little babies while crying and demanding to know what was happening. Shep Smith was more interesting - he was actually smoldering with serious rage, and kept interrupting Hannity, particularly when the latter started to try and introduce some "perspective". He reacted: "This is perspective! This is perspective, this is all the perspective you need right here!"


Geraldo cries, Shep snarls.

Even Celine Dion has allowed her make-up to smudge in order to emote and damn Bush's Iraq policies among other things. The fuck d'you expect, though? She's Canadian, dammit. (Actually, I've just tried to watch that clip - ignore it before and after meals, please. Finally, of course, rapper kanYe West put it best when he fucked with Mike Myers' head on the Concert for Hurricane Relief: "I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they are looting if you see a white family it says they are looking for food ... George Bush doesn't care about black people."