Now, let's not take away from the sheer enormity of the earthquake and tsunami that has wrecked northern Japan. Obviously, it's a story with implications for this nation. But one would imagine that a 24-hour news channel might allow for a bit of coverage of other news. And if you had watched CNN this weekend, you might have heard a top of the hour mention of the Saturday rally in Madison, Wisconsin. In fact, here it is, from Sunday:
"A homecoming this weekend in Wisconsin for 14 Democratic senators who fled the state to block a vote on a bill cutting public workers' union rights. They were greeted by cheering crowds at the state capitol. The Republican-controlled Senate passed the controversial bill last week without the Democrats by taking out its spending provisions." Those "cheering crowds" numbered at around 100,000.
It was given the same weight as Rep. Michele Bachmann's basic ignorance of Schoolhouse Rock history.
Still, it was better than MSNBC, which didn't pause its weekend of Lockup episodes for any of the big news stories. Apparently, shivs, sodomy, and toilet hooch are more important than massive deaths or massive marches. Prisoners over people, so very American, you know. It doesn't have to bleed to lead. It's just blood all the time.
For the last month, the mainstream media ignored many of the important details of the story of Wisconsin's cross-eyed governor's repeal of collective bargaining rights. But it's sadly par for the course. If ten teabaggers farted in the same place last year, there was wall-to-wall coverage of the velocity and odor. Of course, the Tea Party stooges are merely doing the bidding of their very wealthy and corporate chain yankers, so there's a stake in making them appear mainstream. Teabaggers are begging to be left alone in selfish disempowerment. The protests in Wisconsin (and Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Iowa) are about the rights of individuals to fight together for fairness and equality. The 100,000 people in Madison marched in a genuine protest against a tangible wrong, not an incomprehensible yawp against wrongly perceived and non-existent ills. It's a fine line. No, wait. It's a broad gulf between the two.
There's bad timing, for sure. And Japan's double-whammy should have made everyone stop giving a happy monkey fuck about media whores like Charlie Sheen and Sarah Palin. But, surely, CNN could have cut away a few times from the endless repetition of tsunami videos to focus on a political rally that was larger than any event the destructive teabaggers ever managed to cobble together. Surely, the roiling American Midwest is worthy of attention, too.
