Let the Eagle Snore
I didn't watch much of the inaugural last Tuesday. I was subjected to some of it involuntarily in the cafeteria at work, and I did flip on CNN occasionally out of some masochistic impulse cleverly disguised as morbid curiosity. Also, I did read a transcript of Bush's speech. I won't even get into my opinion on that right now except to say that the lyrics "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" have taken on a whole new meaning.
Luckily for me and the rest of the world, the networks were there to cover EVERY FRIGGIN' MINUTE of the festivities. Were you a bit curious about what the lovely and semi-comatose Mrs. Bush was wearing that day? You could easily find two-plus hours of coverage on that very topic if you worked the remote properly. Care to see an endless parade of photos showing people gathering at various places of gatheringhood (coffee shops, bars, conference rooms, homes) to watch the very thing you tuned in to see yourself? Try any of the very familiar alphabet-soup news channels and you were sure to catch some such montage within the hour. (I am haunted by an image of people watching a screen showing people watching a screen showing people watching a screen. . . . ) And if you are one of those people who get a kick out of tracking the president's every boring, mundane move over the course of a day, you were really in luck! (Good thing Dubya was more accessible last Thursday than he was on 9/11! That would have been a REAL bummer!)
The ultimate treat of the day, however, had to be the rousing rendition (sung by some yahoo whose name I can't recall while a bunch of the president's entourage was walking along some hallway to somewhere) of former attorney general John Ashcroft's patriotic song, "Let the Eagle Soar." If you've never heard this little ditty, you've obviously been living under a rock--a wonderful, blessed rock of safety and comfort. For a little background on the origins and history of the "song," read this. For a hilarious set of alternative lyrics, click here and read the second verse. (If you want to hear the actual "song," you'll have to Google it yourself--I just can't bring myself to put that out there.) To summarize the . . . I guess you'd call them lyrics, basically the eagle soars from shore to shore and it's all glorious and God is great and yadda yadda yadda. In one of the more ironic moments of the night, at one point the coverage of the playing of this song was followed by a commercial--maybe you've seen it?--of an actual eagle TRYING to soar but instead coughing and gagging from the excessive air pollution brought on by lax environmental controls, which as many of you know are a trademark of this ADMINISTRATION, who was using the "Let the Eagle Soar" song to promote its own ALLEGED PATRIOTISM. . . .
(Please pardon me while I gag and spit in rage and frustration.)
O.K. But the original gripe of this post was supposed to be, Why do the networks have to spend ALL FRIGGIN' DAY covering this event where BASICALLY NOTHING HAPPENS and it's COMPLETELY BORING?
Of course, the boringness could all be in the semantics. The very word "inauguration" conjures up boring notions of formality and the raising of hands and long, dull speeches and pomp, pomp, pomp. Maybe that's why FOX News decided to vamp things up, and instead of calling it an "inauguration" instead went with the more hip, exciting term "celebration"?
Yeah, I'm sure that's why. It couldn't possibly be anything else, like BIAS, right?
Luckily for me and the rest of the world, the networks were there to cover EVERY FRIGGIN' MINUTE of the festivities. Were you a bit curious about what the lovely and semi-comatose Mrs. Bush was wearing that day? You could easily find two-plus hours of coverage on that very topic if you worked the remote properly. Care to see an endless parade of photos showing people gathering at various places of gatheringhood (coffee shops, bars, conference rooms, homes) to watch the very thing you tuned in to see yourself? Try any of the very familiar alphabet-soup news channels and you were sure to catch some such montage within the hour. (I am haunted by an image of people watching a screen showing people watching a screen showing people watching a screen. . . . ) And if you are one of those people who get a kick out of tracking the president's every boring, mundane move over the course of a day, you were really in luck! (Good thing Dubya was more accessible last Thursday than he was on 9/11! That would have been a REAL bummer!)
The ultimate treat of the day, however, had to be the rousing rendition (sung by some yahoo whose name I can't recall while a bunch of the president's entourage was walking along some hallway to somewhere) of former attorney general John Ashcroft's patriotic song, "Let the Eagle Soar." If you've never heard this little ditty, you've obviously been living under a rock--a wonderful, blessed rock of safety and comfort. For a little background on the origins and history of the "song," read this. For a hilarious set of alternative lyrics, click here and read the second verse. (If you want to hear the actual "song," you'll have to Google it yourself--I just can't bring myself to put that out there.) To summarize the . . . I guess you'd call them lyrics, basically the eagle soars from shore to shore and it's all glorious and God is great and yadda yadda yadda. In one of the more ironic moments of the night, at one point the coverage of the playing of this song was followed by a commercial--maybe you've seen it?--of an actual eagle TRYING to soar but instead coughing and gagging from the excessive air pollution brought on by lax environmental controls, which as many of you know are a trademark of this ADMINISTRATION, who was using the "Let the Eagle Soar" song to promote its own ALLEGED PATRIOTISM. . . .
(Please pardon me while I gag and spit in rage and frustration.)
O.K. But the original gripe of this post was supposed to be, Why do the networks have to spend ALL FRIGGIN' DAY covering this event where BASICALLY NOTHING HAPPENS and it's COMPLETELY BORING?
Of course, the boringness could all be in the semantics. The very word "inauguration" conjures up boring notions of formality and the raising of hands and long, dull speeches and pomp, pomp, pomp. Maybe that's why FOX News decided to vamp things up, and instead of calling it an "inauguration" instead went with the more hip, exciting term "celebration"?
Yeah, I'm sure that's why. It couldn't possibly be anything else, like BIAS, right?
posted by flipper @ 7:19 PM
2 Comments:
At 11:47 AM,
David said…
The Slate.com blogger "Surfer Girl" posted these thoughts on the inauguration media coverage. (How can I get a job like that?) She has a similar disdainful view. (I post her entire observation below. For more Surfer Girl stuff and to avoid plagerism accusations being hurled at me go to slate.com.)
"Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005
There was so much dead air to fill during today's coverage of the Bush inauguration that MSNBC's cameras took the time to include loving close-ups of the etched crystal hurricane shades given as gifts to the Bushes and Cheneys at the inaugural luncheon (they looked like something you'd get from an aunt at your wedding, then keep in a closet and use to store pennies.) But once the parade got started, you had to change channels at a pretty rapid clip to catch even the scantest coverage of the crowds of protesters.
As the presidential motorcade passed Lafayette Park, where the majority of the protesters were gathered, you could clearly hear one man repeatedly yelling "F**k Bush!," an inelegant but unmistakable sentiment that the CNN anchor team (Paula Zahn, Jeff Greenfield, and Wolf Blitzer) politely ignored. But CNN did feature one camera angle deliberately designed to simulate Bush's POV from his limo, which sped up as it passed the block filled with people turning their backs on the motorcade or waving pre-printed signs with the Simpsons-influenced slogan, "Worst President Ever." As the Lafayette Park protesters tried to out-shout the pro-Bush crowds on the other side of the street, the limo picked up speed and the Secret Service men walking alongside it began to jog briskly.
What passed for suspense in the anchors' narration of the parade route was the question: would George and Laura get out and walk a part of the route, as every president has done since Jimmy Carter started the tradition in 1977, stopping his car to stroll with Rosalynn all the way from Capitol Hill to the White House? Some commentators wondered aloud whether the Bushes would forgo even the short walk they took in 2001, when protesters pelted the motorcade with bottles and eggs. But a few minutes ago, just one block from the White House, in a section where the reviewing stands were filled with Bush's biggest donors, the First Couple finally emerged from their limo and, surrounded by a thicket of Secret Servicemen, made their way down the final block to their place at the reviewing stand. In a strangely cynical underestimation of the viewing public's intelligence, Jeff Greenfield could be heard to say, "On tonight's newscasts and tomorrow morning's papers, it won't matter whether the President and Mrs. Bush walked one block or fifteen. These are the pictures you're going to see."
So for those of you who couldn't figure it out from the, oh, six or seven major television networks that broadcast every minute of the event live, you heard it here first: the man who invoked "freedom" 27 times in his high-flown, low-fiber inauguration speech preferred the snug confines of his limousine until the last few hundred yards, when he emerged to blow kisses to the folks in the $125 seats. The name of this final stretch of the parade route: Freedom Square. ... 1:40 p.m."
Ouch!
At 11:31 AM,
Sven Golly said…
Thank you, Flipper; thank you, Burb; and thank you, Surfer Girl. I wish I'd said that, and I'm glad somebody is saying it. So keep up the good work, and let free people everywhere exercise their critical beaks, so that the wild goose of dissent soars over the motorcade of fascism and poops on the president's bulletproof windshield.
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