Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

Did anybody else happen to catch MSNBC’s coverage of Yasser Arafat’s funeral this morning? Coverage isn’t really the right word. The right word escapes me. Let me try to explain.

Apparently MSNBC simulcasts the Don Imus radio show in the mornings (the sad things one learns while on vacation). Anyway, today’s show consisted of him chatting with Andrea Mitchell, who was posted on a rooftop in Ramallah to cover the burial. She was basically playing the straight man for a bunch of pretty tasteless, humorless jokes about Palestinian funeral customs.

Listen, I don’t really understand thousands of people shooting their guns in the air either, but that’s one of the ways they pay respect to people they consider military heroes. Most Palestinians probably wouldn’t get my family’s custom of eating too much and getting really drunk after a funeral. Such is life on a big planet.

The problem with shooting guns in the air is that all of those bullets come back down somewhere. This is actually a pretty serious problem in Philadelphia, of all places. I used to live in a neighborhood where some people (not me) go outside on holidays, like Independence Day or New Years Eve, and shoot handguns and semiautomatic weapons into the sky. Inevitably somebody, usually completely uninvolved, will be found later with a bullet lodged in their brain and a bullet hole in their ceiling. Brutal stuff.

Nevertheless, I’m fairly certain that the Palestinians are fully aware of the dangers of their custom and they still choose to attend funerals, en mass, where it takes place. That’s fine I guess. They can do as they please. What’s not fine is that MSNBC had Andrea Mitchell, and her whole off camera crew, posted on rooftop, completely exposed, while tens of thousands of people were shooting guns into the air - all so she could play Don Imus’ straight man. She was clearly scared half out of her mind - stammering and pausing and unable to finish sentences or sometimes even words. All the while, good old Imus continued his unfunny, tasteless blather.

On second thought, she has enough clout to get herself out of doing something so mindlessly stupid without hurting her career. Her crew doesn’t.

There are no words.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 12th, 2004 at 10:35 am and is filed under Blather, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.