New poem: WITHDRAWAL

I'm trying so hard to withdraw,

to untie the rubber tube

and wrench the syringe of cable news

from my veins.

Don't want to see the CNN Saturday anchor

smile every time she reads something 

off the prompter.

Don't want to see MSNBC hosts

named Lawrence and Ed

competing for who can get the most headlines

to fill the ratings void left 

when Keith Olbermann was unjustly fired.

Don't want to see Chris Matthews

saying things about Anthony Weiner

"sticking it out."

Don't want to see Anderson Cooper

being a puppet of his writers and producers.

Don't want to see Fox News

unless I'm in a doctor's waiting room

where I have no choice.

And, even then, I want a magazine

to keep me from being irradiated

by Republican talking points

and facts twisted like Silly Putty.

Don't want to watch HLN

and hear Nancy Grace

snarl about Lady Justice.

Or, for that matter, 

Doctor Drew and his endless quest

to present himself

as a sober-minded moralistic ambulance chaser.

I just want to tear out the needle

and the syringe

and throw them across the room

hearing the breaking glass of the syringe

and pronouncing myself

cured of propaganda and endless distraction

from the news that really matters.

It's all over now: the end of LARRY KING LIVE.

It's going to be easy to snark about the latter years of LARRY KING LIVE where Larry's tendencies to throw overdeferential-to-guests softballs, not ask follow-up questions and become disengaged in the proceedings caught up with him.

Better to focus on what LARRY KING LIVE meant to CNN upon its 1985 debut: a chance for the network to evolve beyond its just-straight-newcasts-around-the-clock original formula.

Perhaps the show was at its best in the latter 1980s.  I particularly remember 1987, when news events such as the Iran/Contra hearings and the Jim Bakker/Tammy Faye Bakker/Jessica Hahn/PTL scandals were front-page news.  And it made for lively viewing as participants in the above events would come onto Larry's show to spin things their way.  In those days, Larry was still actively engaged in conversation with guests.

Now, that's all been washed away by CNN; CNN is now run by the guy who helped turn HLN (Headline News)'s prime-time lineup into Tabloid Central.  And it will be interesting to see if Piers Morgan's UK tabloid approach can transfer to CNN as successfully as Larry King's talk radio format did.

Ted Turner decries "fluff" on CNN.

Just read an account of a gee-I-wish-I-were-running-things-now interview with Ted Turner (I believe it was on Bloomberg News) where, among other things, he displayed discontent with the "fluff" on Cable News Network and expressed a wish for more "news" on the channel.

To be absolutely cynical, I don't foresee CNN (along with sister station HLN) decreasing their focus on who-said-that/who-went-too-far.

After all, when corporations run for-profit news channels, there's a ginormous list of news stories that news directors know not to devote their increasingly-less-vast resources to.