Disaster burnout syndrome is too personal to publish
I don't know why I should find this disturbing (and I don't know whether I'm whining or ranting), but last night when I was watching the forced landing of that JetBlue plane at LAX, I did my usual switching back and forth between Fox and CNN (to compare coverage).
On CNN Larry King was giving the blow-by-blow, talking with some pilot or another. On Fox, it was Sean Hannity.
Maybe I've been under too much stress lately, but Larry King seemed like an old, familiar, friend, and I wanted him to narrate the ordeal for me. By stark contrast, the idea of having Sean Hannity do it seemed repellant. Almost poisonous. I just wasn't in the mood for his persona.
I have a feeling it would be that way in real life, too.
I like people I can relax around.
Does this mean there's something wrong with me?
It must mean something, or else it wouldn't be bothering me enough to write a blog post about it.
Ironically, I'd rather have Sean Hannity interview someone I disliked. He asks the tough questions that Larry King would never ask.
But I like Larry King. It's almost like a trust thing.
Or doesn't stuff like that matter anymore? Probably not. It's a feeling thing. It makes no sense.
(Besides, I wouldn't understand. Better to just keep the damn TV off.)
After looking at this post again, I've decided against my better judgment to publish it, not because I think my "feelings" were (or are) right. Indeed, how can feelings be right or wrong? They just are. The point is, one should not allow one's actions to be dictated by feelings and emotions. Yet when I am deciding whether to watch CNN or Fox, what else is there to be guided by other than feelings? It's not quite the same thing as poring dryly and dispassionately over a transcript of what was said. This stuff is hard hitting, graphical, and narrated by human beings with biases and emotions unique to them, but calculated to influence the viewer.
And therein lies the rub. I don't want to be influenced. I don't want someone's agenda sneaking into what I watch, but if I watch television, that's precisely what happens. Larry King (at least so it seemed last night) didn't seem to be running with any hint of an agenda. Just an old, familiar guy. What the hell is wrong with that? With Sean Hannity, I'm always on edge, waiting for him to insert some coded language about something or other, and not wanting to allow it to contaminate my thinking. This was particular to those two personalities last night, and really should not be taken as a generalization about CNN or Fox (although I get that same, Hannitylike feeling of coded-language defensiveness watching CNN's Aaron Brown). Larry King does not typify CNN, because he doesn't come off as a whiner.
If I had to generalize about the two network's "styles," in general I'd say that politics aside, CNN errs on the side of whining (even apologizing) while Fox errs on the side of ranting (even hysteria). This tendency has become especially apparent to me during disaster coverage. It's OK, but it does require me to switch back and forth, lest I be whined into ranting, or ranted into whining. Again it doesn't make sense.
And no, I wouldn't [not even at the risk of committing praeteritio?] go so far as to call them "Cable News Whining" or "Fox News Hysteria." It's much too personal for that.
UPDATE: Ian Schwartz has the Fox video of the JetBlue emergency landing. So does Crooks and Liars. (I guess by watching Larry King I've been outvoted!) (Via InstaPundit.)
MORE: A commenter below just pointed to James Lileks' brilliant words on this subject:
Everyone in TV: SHUT UP. Just SHUT UP. Let me put it this way: a huge flying machine stuffed with souls is heading in for an emergency landing. It drops from the sky, heavy and slow. Two hundred feet – one hundred, fifty, ten – doesn’t matter, really; an an inch might as well be a mile, since what counts is the moment when the broken wheel scrapes its face on the unforgiving earth. Here’s what the viewer desires at this moment:
Silence.
Might it be that what I really wanted was silence, and that my feelings were telling me Larry King was more "silent" than Sean Hannity?
posted by Eric on 09.22.05 at 09:44 AM
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Comments
King is grandpa telling you everything is going to be all right. Hannity is brother telling you all the awful things that could happen and scaring you. We all need reassurance at times even if grandpa is a creep.
Hungry Valley · September 22, 2005 11:03 AM
Thanks for reminding me that Larry King is older than I am and Sean Hannity is younger. Neither fact should be relevant.
I agree with you; even though I am staunchly conservative, Sean Hannity grates on my nerves. His style is more confrontational than I am comfortable with. I couldn't deal with listening to him in that type of breaking news scenario. I can't deal with him even in his forte of conservative rants.
But on the subject of the airplane, I agree with Lileks' latest: Talking heads, just shut up during critical moments like the actual landing.
Charlie · September 22, 2005 11:34 AM
In this type of TV report, as in most sports, we can see the picture, we do not need someone telling us what we are looking at, or adding their own interpretation, do they think we are blind, or just idiots? I suspect the later.
Hugh
H.Scheie · September 22, 2005 11:58 AM
Hannity, King et al. are why God invented the mute button...
Heffalump · September 22, 2005 12:05 PM
Interesting dualism, the styles Between whining and apologizing vs. ranting and hysteria, it's Peikoff-obvious which I prefer. Once again, the Right has all the style.
Between King and Hannity, I can see that King has a certain grandfatherly or avuncular and reassuring style. I used to watch him back in the early 1990s, back in the days when I was still watching TV.
As for Hannity, I've never seen him on TV, but I have seen his books. Synchronicity again: I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore looking at his books, seeing his picture, and thinking: What a man, I bet many a man's man would go for him! And the next day, John Kusch (a man's man who used to comment in Dean's World and who used to have an excellent blog, Letters From A Strip Of Dirt) replied to Dean, who was complaining about Hannity, and John Kusch said that Hannity was sexy and so should stay on TV. Now the thing is, John Kusch and Sean Hannity are on very different sides of a spectrum ideologically, would hardly agree on anything, but it was inevitable that, nonethless, a man's man like John would be drawn to a man like Sean. The Queen of All Evil likes Hannity, too.
Some men are and have been just very manly-looking men: Sean Hannity, yes, but even more so, more heroically: George Gordon Battle Liddy, John A. Stormer (who wrote the Conservative classic None Dare Call It Treason in 1964, and later wrote Death of A Nation), Dr. Thomas Szasz, Anton Szandor LaVey, Oswald Spengler, Friedrich Nietzsche, and, of course, Eric Scheie of Classical Values. I would love to look like any of those men.
I must confess that, while I've read all of her books, and while I agree with most of what she says, especially when she skewers the Left, I'm not as turned on by Ann Coulter as perhaps I ought to be.
I must also confess that I find myself unable to work up a proper Objectivist passion for Ayn Rand. Must be my mystic irrationalist premises. At least Camille Paglia is good-looking. I am philosophically closer to Paglia than to Rand on a spectrum, but Camille ought to write a novel like The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. She needs to create a myth of her own.
And yet, while I'm disgusted by just about everything she says (not that I listen any more), I'm still turned on by Eleanor Clift. The mute button must be on at all times, in that case.
I saw the Hannity coverage on the Teen Pundit website and he so annoyed me I muted the computer. Hannity has an awful, ugly voice, or at least he did on that segment, and he was so obviously scraping to fill air time... Lileks has it right.
I listen to alot of right-wing radio. And I find I can listen to people I vehemently disagree with, as long as they aren't telling me that I'm a scum-sucking hole of a man, who hates god and tries to kill america. Then I have to turn it off. On the other hand, I can watch O'reilly... when he's calm. At times I don't mind listening to Gingrich occassionally; Since I'm liberal I like McCain, especially his tone and demeanor.
Likewise, I like listening to a few people on Air-America, but most are just the exact reverse. On the other hand, I know the occassional conservative who likes Jon Stewart (admit it, his Kerry jokes were funny, and the crossfire thing was classic). Larry King (whom I've never bothered to watch) seems to have a nice tone, afterall he spends most of his time talking about the wondeful lives of celebrities.
I think most people are moving away from the grating voices. The blogs have opened up conversation peices that are often informative. Sure, they can be violent, but at least the aggression is real emotion. Not some over-produced, intentionally mislabeled fluff that the Hannity's/Limbaughs/Frankens/Moores produce.
alchemist · September 22, 2005 07:09 PM
Steven I don't consider myself worthy of such compliments or comparisons, but thank you!
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
King is grandpa telling you everything is going to be all right. Hannity is brother telling you all the awful things that could happen and scaring you. We all need reassurance at times even if grandpa is a creep.