Who Invited Her?

The main reason I hate the 24-hour cable news channels is that they don't actually believe in anything. Whether it is Fox News or MSNBC, each side is so desperate to keep to the narrative they have been contractually told to follow that they are constantly contradicting themselves. You see, apparently these people don't know that neither political party is all that great and that both sides of the aisle are pretty much made up of the same people hiding behind a letter after their name. They may claim to want different things, but whether they are a Democrat or a Republican, the main thing they really want is money and power. Actually helping people in the course of getting those mostly seems like a happy accident. So, while these political reporters are gleefully banging on the other party for doing something stupid, it never seems to occur to them that their party is doing the same thing, it just hasn't come to light yet. When it finally does come out, they start making excuses for them instead of calling the politicians out for being the idiots the rest of us know they are. Frankly, the entire thing is a joke and as a former journalist it annoys me to no end. But, now the inability to stick to one side of an issue has started to seep into the rest of their lives.

You may remember about a month ago I wrote about how annoying I found it that Greta Van Susteren was able to get Louis CK out as host of this weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner. Apparently Van Susteren didn't think CK was the right kind of speaker due to the crass jokes he makes about women. While I don't know who made her the sheriff of comedy town I figure her stance was fair enough - I happen to think Louis is very funny, but acknowledge that his comedy is not for everyone and she is as entitled to her own opinion as the next person. I actually thought Louie dodged a bullet with that one, as it probably wasn't his kind of room anyway. My biggest pet peeve with the whole thing was that Van Susteren didn't offer to help find a replacement and only offered criticism, which is just rude. Still, I wasn't about to start an online petition to protest the event or anything. However, today  it was revealed that Van Susteren had invited Lindsey Lohan to be her special guest at the event. Hold on, Louis CK can't go but Lindsey Lohan is cool? You may not like Louis's comedy, but at least he doesn't keep getting arrested for drugs and alcohol. There is no one less Presidential I can think of than Lindsey Lohan.

This is just another example of 24-hour cable new journalists, who when you get down to it are still supposed to be the people who give facts without opinions, switching their opinion whenever the mood strikes them. The reason this really makes my skin crawl is that if anyone from the left side of the aisle announced they were bringing Lindsey Lohan to the White House Correspondents Dinner I have no doubt that Van Susteren would be on TV, condemning them for disgracing this long-standing Washington tradition. (If the current President was a Republican she'd probably be demanding they be brought up on charges of treason.) What is even scarier is that there are people out there who believe everything these people say. It is one thing to have no morals or code of ethics for yourself, but when you actually hold some influence over a wide swath of people that can get a little scary. We all have our biases, but when you only believe something as long as it is convenient to do so you don't really believe it at all. I know I certainly wouldn't want to be on TV saying things I didn't believe.

I know I may be making too big a deal out of this. After all, Fox News gets about 2 million viewers a night and in a country of 300 million people, that means less than one percent of people in America watch Greta on a daily basis. Plus, I should take a step back and remember what event we are talking about here. A couple days ago I heard a great line about Washington, D.C. versus Hollywood: "Hollywood is full of famous, beautiful people who think they have power out in the real world while D.C. is full of ugly people with actual power who just want to be famous." No where does this line blur more than the White House Correspondents' Dinner. That night it is all about seeing and being seen, so it is not like Lohan is being asked to come in and consult on a policy board. I just wish Van Susteren and all her fellow journalist would take a moment to think about how they would react if a some reporter from MSNBC did the same thing. This whole thing started because Van Susteren objected to a comedian being at the dinner, but with this move she's the one who looks like a joke.