I was reading Roger Ebert’s excellent piece about the sad template that Bill O’Reilly is currently etching, and it occurred to me that the problem on the 24-hour news network isn’t the creeping partisan politics masquerading as news, it’s the networks themselves.

Consider: prior to the 1980s, the national news was a half-hour long and took place once a day. Paltry? Probably. But also well researched, fact-checked, and thought-out.

Before the advent of continued news coverage, the people charged with reporting the evening news took the time to consider what was important, how to frame it so that the relevant parts were underlined, and, finally, how to present it so that everyone in America could understand it. This wasn’t because they were geniuses, it was a function of having 23 and 1/2 hours a day to work on the problem: there was time to try to get the news right.

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Fox

This week, my brain clacked about The Observer, Madonna the hypocrite, and so much more. See if you agree with my thoughts:

The Observer is a stroke of genius. Not only are viewers tuning into Fringe every week to catch a glimpse of him, they’re recording the show and playing it back to find him (note: he was in the German airport in this week’s episode). My son actually text’d me from school on Wednesday, because he and his buddies were talking about Fringe. Remember the line in this week’s episode, “Where does the gentleman live?” My son thinks The Observer is the gentleman, and he lives in Little Hill. If only we knew what or where Little Hill is. Some place deep in the earth’s core, perhaps?

The girls on Fox News are all cute, blonde and skinny. Why is this? I have some theories: 1) It’s in Bill O’Reilly’s contract; 2) Because the network is named Fox, all the women have to BE foxes; and 3) The girls actually come in plump, brunette models, but are given magic makeovers that turn them into skinny blondes (Criss Angel on staff, perhaps?).

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