Headline News (now HLN) used to be my favorite TV station.  Like many in my generation, I became a news junkie after 9/11.  Before that tragic event there wasn’t enough chocolate on Earth to successfully bribe me to watch the news.  8 years after becoming an avid follower of cable news, I’m left wondering what the hell happened.  Cable news isn’t the news anymore.  It is sensationalist.  It is petty.  It is reality TV mixed with a dash of what-just-happened.  I expect this from the local evening news, but my cable news is dying.  Someone get me a crash cart.

Now, I am not singling out Glenn Beck.  You could certainly throw Bill O’Reilly, Nancy Grace and a few other sensationalist fear mongers in there as well, but I am going to focus on Beck because he is in the news today.  Yesterday, Glenn Beck made a criticism of the proceedings in congress that I don’t quite understand.  Here, watch for yourself:

I don’t get it.  What makes her story unremarkable?  I mean, you don’t have to agree with her platform, but to denigrate the accomplishments of a woman like Sonia Sotomayor seems illogical to me at best.  Irresponsible journalism sounds more like it.  She graduated from Princeton, man.  I looked up your life’s accomplishments and I don’t see much that qualifies you to make a statement like that.  You aren’t reporting news.  You’re no journalist.  To say someone like Glenn Beck “spins” the facts is innaccurate.  He ignores them.  These people are perpetuating idiocy.

So why the hell is he on a NEWS station?

What scares me is that I sincerely believe it shows in our electorate.  Ask your average voter what the facts are.  They’ll bumble, stumble and fall, but ask them why not to vote in someone like Sotomayor and I’m sure a contingent will let the reasoning flow.  Of course, it won’t make sense.  It didn’t coming from Beck, and it won’t when regurgitated by a voter.

The reason I brought up HLN is because I feel like it epitomizes this movement towards sensationist news stations with a lack of substance.  Headline News was a half hour of news looped throughout the day and updated when need be.  If you wanted to be informed, you had it on in the background.  It wasn’t perfect.  No United States news entity is.  The scope of ethnocentrism is a narrow one.  However, it was better than what we have now.  Now I turn on this rebranded MTV-like news station called HLN and see AJ Hammer telling me what Lindsay Lohan did yesterday.  He must be under the presumption that I give a rat’s ass.

Will someone save our cable news, please?