Cindy Sheehan screaming about her dead son, the Gaza settlers pleading for their homes, the families of the BTK killer’s victims confronting the monster in court — it’s been an emotional past few days on the cable news shows, like a gigantic encounter session, sort of, or an international Oprah Winfrey show with higher than normal stakes. That sounds facetious, and I guess it is, but an overdose of raw emotion tends to wear on the nerves after a point and invite a defensive mental reaction. Gaza, of course, is a story of deep consequence, but when it’s mixed up with all the other extreme behavior that the cameras are focussing on right now it loses some of its distinctive impact. Life imitates art, and if the reigning popular art form now is reality TV, then we may be looking forward to a period when the news will be dominated by weeping fits, shouting contests, nervous breakdowns, and other raw displays of feeling, some of them premeditated and staged. Certainly the unprecedented run of this Aruba murder on Fox News doesn’t bode well. All hysteria all the time — is that’s what’s coming? Looks that way. (Though Sheehan has every right to her emotion, as far as I’m concerned, since a war that can’t survive a mourning mother shouldn’t be going on at all.)
– posted by Walter
The Dish 