U.S. Media's Audience Dilemma: The Double Entendre

It would be hard to top msnbc's brilliant work last week on those rather queer "teabagging" events, urged on by the ever-breathless Fox News Network as it played to its hopelessly clueless small-town American audience who wouldn't know a bad analogy if it hit them, ahem, straight between the lips (or hips, for that matter).

Whatever, this is 420 Day, one of those true alt.holidays in America (i.e., what were you inhaling at 4:20 pm today?) that I expect will fall just as flat as those pathetic tea-bagging events did last week in the places where conservative media still hold sway.

These cultural gaps actually make me feel a bit sad. The urban hipsters employ a language filled with nuances that capture our reality but that leave the linear and literal-minded masses in the dark. While I laugh along with the Keith Olbermanns of this world as heartily as the next metrosexual guy, I also worry that these media-induced gaffes by the rural, the under-educated, the faithful, and the clueless actually presage a widening class gap in the U.S. that will help none of us, even if it does sell a few more consumer goods in the process.

Media companies nowadays are all about exploiting niches. Nobody does it better presently than Cable TV, although the Internet is poised to give cable a pretty good run for its money on this score. I view msnbc and Fox, alternatively, as alternative mirrors of a horror show, the laughable left vs. laughable right.
Call it polarized TV. I guess it works, right? Boosts ratings and all that good stuff. But, even though msnbc's coverage is smart and Fox's is stupid, both leave me cold. Neither strike me as useful journalism. Both strike me as currently successful business plans, even as they represent ultimately useless journalism plans. And therein lies the problem.