Just Suppose

I had an odd little televisory experience the other night. In a fit of massive boredom, I was flipping between CNN's coverage of the February 3rd Democratic primaries, and American Idol. And I'm not exactly sure which is the better way to pick a winner.

The beauty of it was the fact that, at nearly the exact moment Joe Lieberman was announcing his exit from the presidential race, Simon, Paula and Randy were going from room to room, telling would-be pop stars that their quests were similarly over. Now could we just have one of them stop off to see Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich?

Speaking of CNN and pop stars, the cable network had some fairly brutal assessments of the high-level response to Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" in the Super Bowl halftime show. The anchor on some news show over there -- I'm not sure which, but I think the program's namesake had two last names and wasn't Wolf Blitzer -- commented that the FCC was investigating the matter after less than two days, while the decision to investigate pre-war intelligence dragged on and on and on.

They then drew attention to FCC chair Michael Powell, who called the breast something along the lines of an ignominious end to an otherwise wholesome show. Well, maybe not exactly that, but you get the idea. This was followed immediately by a snide comment about and footage of Kid Rock's lyrics, which was actually a pretty darn good point. And I still haven't seen anyone mention Shaq's outburst earlier in the day.

I can't completely let CNN off the hook, though. At some point, they actually had someone with the title "Celebrity Justice Analyst" commenting on the Martha Stewart trial. I suppose I should have guessed The Daily Show was basing their increasing ridiculous analyst titles on something, but I had no idea there was so little space between parodier and parodee.