Karen-Time Highlights
Puppy Bowl, on Animal Planet. This was what we watched on Sunday instead of that other game. There was a pen designed to look like a football stadium, containing two goal posts, yard markings, tiny painted people in the crowd (with simulated flash bulbs), and lots of frolicking puppies. There was no format, just a bunch of puppies playing. If one puppy jumped on another one, they'd do an instant replay. Sometimes they'd show the Puppy Cam or Bowl Cam (from inside the water bowl). There was no announcer shouting in the background, only the kind of easy listening you hear on the travel channel when they do a panoramic scenery shot. I cannot tell you how mesmerizing this show was. It was like that Bob Ross "Happy Little Tree" show in days of old. Ten minutes into Puppy Bowl, a thin thread of drool began to slip from the corners of our mouths, and I had the distinct sensation that we resembled those children who stand in front of the television, worshiping the Teletubbies for hours on end. Puppy Bowl rocks!
Commercial. That Strattera commercial is my favorite. The woman is sitting in a presumably important meeting, totally spacing out, and all these images are flashing through her head. Most of them are normal—of her kids and such—but toward the end, if you watch closely, you'll see a man in a creepy bunny suit standing in front of some foliage. I don't know what this is about, but I watch for it every time because it's hilarious. Can this be a sly reference to Donnie Darko, I wonder? Why else would Anne be thinking about a guy in a bunny suit? There are any number of scenarios that could explain this, a few of which are not publishable, but I guess the better question is, what were the advertisers smoking when they came up with this in the first place? Nothing is random in advertising. There must have been a moment where some overpaid executive at a long oval table said, "She should be thinking of a guy in a bunny suit." I only wish I could have been there to hear it, so I could have told them how incredibly weird that was, and how it was sure to give children nightmares.
Paula Zahn is obnoxious. Bristling with righteous indignation, Paula Zahn faces off with Ward Churchill, the dissident professor from Colorado. She asks angry questions without listening to the answers. She demands apologies. She is so effusive in her outrage that she barely gives the man an opportunity to speak. She is the epitome of everything that I hate about journalism today. I don't object to the adversarial quality of her interview—sometimes people need to be asked tough questions—but her approach had nothing to do with finding out answers. She ignored the points he made (part of this had to do with her being seriously outmatched intellectually)—and he did have a cogent argument, whether or not you agree with him. In short, it was a ridiculous and embarrassing display on Paula's part. I'd also like to remind Ms. Zahn that there is something called the First Amendment. There are a bunch of others, but the first one is a doozy.
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