The Circus: Fox, MSNBC and CNN all hire Sarah Palin

Historians will someday look back at our celebrity-obsessed society,
and what is called cable news, and ask what went wrong with us.

I do find Palin offensive and worthy of some comment. California
may be on the brink of bankruptcy, teachers are being laid off, the university system
faces financial disaster, but Palin must have her $100,000, her first-class airfare
or the most luxurious private jet, and of course, the proper bottled water with
the proper bended straw. Heaven help Her Majesty if the straw isn’t the right straw.

But what about the jobless workers living in jobless hell? What
about the foreclosures destroying families throughout the nation in our modern Grapes
of Wrath? Does the world’s great superpower really want to be dependent on Russia
or any other nation to rent us space on their spaceflights, which has leading astronauts
upset, for good reason, as I am?

These are minor issues compared to what Sarah Palin does today,
in the eyes of those who decide television news and treat the American people as
though we are idiots who don’t really care about what matters in our nation and
in our lives.

Sarah Palin has been hired by Fox. She dominates MSNBC. She is
omnipresent on CNN.

Sarah Palin is now the perpetual freak show on American television,
the star of every show, the leading lady of every network. Her every moment is chronicled
ad nauseam. Every show must include its Palin segment. Every pundit must tell us
what he or she thinks of her latest inconsequential act.

Meanwhile, the hungry, the poor, the jobless, the homeless, the
victims of the most shameless greed and shameless neglect in generations are nowhere
to be seen on what purports to be the news.

For the many this is an American tragedy.

For the few this is another day in the vast wasteland of what
used to be the news.