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We'll See Who's Tabloid Tonight

Given their choice, I'd say the number of Americans who'd rather see live shots of a cornered desperado shooting it out with the cops on TV is larger than the number who'd choose to watch the State of the Union address by a ratio of approximately 90,000,000 to one, depending on the number of members of Barack Obama's family who're home this evening.

Let's look at the historical evidence to support my claim. Number of motion pictures which conclude with such a shootout: beyond counting. Number of movies concluding with a State of the Union address: One, the horrendous "The American President." As the Hollywood axiom goes, give the people what they want.

So it will be instructive in about an hour and a half, assuming the shootout hasn't come to its inevitable awful end by then, which TV networks, cable and broadcast, have the common sense and guts to at least give a picture-in-picture feed of the events near Big Bear Lake, California while showing us the pictures of the President of the United States saying what all the networks told us he'd be saying in their broadcasts earlier today.

If they did it for O.J. and the NBA Finals (which people care about oh so much more than another Washington speech), they damn well ought to do it in this case.

posted by Michael Gee @ 7:48 PM