Posted on 02/23/2007 3:56:58 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
On Thursday morning, I turned on my satellite TV to surf 24-hour news programs, as I worked on the computer on various projects. To my horror, Fox News had gone to continuous coverage of the train wreck known as the Anna Nicole Smith body custody trial. As a lawyer, I watched a few minutes of it. It was horrible, but fascinatingly, it kept getting worse and worse as it went along.
It was like reading a truly dreadful book or watching a dreadful movie that you know is rotten. But you keep reading or watching to see if it can get even worse. And this one did.
I wont comment on the legal aspects of this case. I agree with many other commentators who said the case should have been decided on an obvious point, in a hearing lasting perhaps 20 minutes, tops.
I have to make a few comments about Judge Larry Seidlin. Ive dealt with hundreds of judges, at every level from District Court (lowest level police court in Baltimore) to the US Supreme Court. Ive seen judges who were characters, or fancied themselves as comedians. But, Ive never before seen the likes of Judge Seidlin.
Early in his career he was a cab driver in the Bronx. I conclude that you can take the cab driver out of the Bronx, but you cant take the Bronx out of the cab driver.
A local, legal website in Broward County says that this judge is a victim of his own inner comedian. I can believe it. He rambled. He repeated himself. He talked at length arriving at no known point. There are people who have microphone syndrome. Confronted with a microphone, they fall in love with the sound of their own voices, and start talking interminably about essentially nothing.
Judge Seidlin also committed reversible errors by the bushel, in my opinion. Most of the testimony that he took in this case was inadmissible and irrelevant to the one real issue presented. The best analogy to how he ran his courtroom was a classic Superbowl commercial which began with cowboys ridin and whompin. As the shot widened, you realized they were herding cats. The cats were running every which way and on top of each other, like the gaggle of lawyers in Seidlins courtroom.
But that wasnt the half of what made this spectacle so awful.
Consider the judgments the editors at Fox News, and all other news agencies, made as they decided to go wall to wall (or nearly that) with that story. As Michelle said to me, this was driven by the fact that many/most men go gaga over blond hair and large boobs on a woman, even if neither the hair color nor the boobs are real.
Couple that with the fact that this unfortunate woman wasnt the sharpest tool in the shed when she was sober and when she was high on booze, drugs, whatever, she became as dumb as a hoe handle. The last pathetic aspect as that everyone in that courtroom was trying to stay on the financial gravy train created by Ms. Smith never mind that she was now dead.
If anyone in that courtroom turns out to have been both honest and capable, I will cheerfully apologize to that exception to the rule.
Until then, I condemn the participants in this pathetic circus, and I condemn the American audiences who watched this empty farce. The news media are not in the business of providing the most important information in clear fashion. Their job is to attract eyeballs. The more people who are watching whatever drivel is on the screen, the more money advertisers will pay for their spots.
The dumbing down of what is called news started in 1977, when ABC News put Roone Arledge, then in charge of its Sports Division, in charge of its News Division. The network was, unfortunately, correct in its judgment. News is really entertainment, except with unpaid actors and unpaid scripts.
The continuing coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, never mind that shed dead, is scraping the bottom of that particular barrel.
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About the Author: John Armor is a lawyer specializing in constitutional law, who may again be a candidate for Congress in the 11th District of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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If I was the judge I would of had the body cremated and split it three ways with the parties.
The Judge is a clown and needs to find another career path.
Feel guilty and DIRTY.
Frankly, I don't think any conclusions about our national "culture" can be drawn from this tacky media partnership with a legal system that has become a circus of the absurd.
We can, without doubt, draw conclusions that reflect very negatively on the entire media industry, and members of that other "industry" who falsely claim to be dedicated to law, truth and justice.
You nailed it, as usual. TN did not get my eyeballs, because I do not have cable. They do get my ears, sometimes - I get the audio in XM satellite.
But, most of the time, it is just pap.
btw, how's your freshman Democrat congresscritter doing over there?
The case cannot be over yet!
We haven't seen the Paris Hilton/Anna Nicole video yet!
(You know it's out there...)
just a microcosm of life in America.
I happened to see some of it when I started dinner early yesterday....
I could have enjoyed the insanity of it, especially when the lawyers started yelling at one another, except for the fact that a baby will reap the destruction that comes at the end of this train wreck.
That said, there's nothing like a good trial on tv to get a lot of hand sewing done, and good company from the tube... ;-)
Somehow, I'm getting the mental picture of Madame DeFarge, here.
< }B^)
LOL As well you should, my specialty is knitting. ;-)
I have been musing over an exchange I had with a liberal, who on learning I wasn't in his fraternity said in a condescending way, "You probably thing journalism isn't objective." My response was laughter, to think that anyone would suppose they could put me on the defensive about journalism. In the event, I was dissatisfied with the way I approached discussing it after he said that laughter wasn't an argument.The dumbing down of what is called news started in 1977, when ABC News put Roone Arledge, then in charge of its Sports Division, in charge of its News Division. The network was, unfortunately, correct in its judgment. News is really entertainment, except with unpaid actors and unpaid scripts.And it occurred to me today that I should have apologized for laughing at his religion. That would have gotten his attention and made him interested in my challenge: if his belief in the objectivity of journalism were based on something other than faith, he would be able to show that journalism tells "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Since nobody even knows the whole truth, and nobody tells everything that they know, it's impossible to prove that journalism does not have a self-interested tendency.
And of course, as you say, it does have a self-interested tendency - journalism has the imperative to entertain. More generally, the one thing journalists want you to take away from their stories is that journalism is important. And although as you suggest, they want the audience to tune in to their particular show, it is noteworthy that journalists adhere to a go-along-and-get-along ethic - no journalist will criticize another journalist, and all journalists uphold the conceit that all journalists are objective. Which ultimately means that there is no substantive competition among journalists - that although we have many journalism outlets we actually have only one journalism.
And liberals hold that that one journalism is the font of all wisdom and the very embodiment of the public interest. Otherwise why accept that the rules for profitable journalism - "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog' rather than 'Dog Bites Man,'" and "Always make your deadline" - ineluctably lead journalism to produce objectivity?
I realized years ago that 'news' is a church full of pregnant girl scouts getting struck by lightning on the Fourth of July.
I don't accept that journalism was more objective without the explicit recognition of its entertainment imperative. In fact, it would be far less tendentious if it was open and candid about its entertainment imperative. After all, that is exactly what the Rush Limbaugh show is - journalism which is candid about its political perspective and about its intention to be entertaining so as to attract a large audience and be able to "charge confiscatory advertising rates."
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If only. There is a ANS thread with over 15,000 posts.
Circus is right, RR. I watched about 10 minutes of this debacle today, and between the judge mugging to the camera, the greed virtually dripping from all present, and some strange blonde woman sobbing in the courtroom, all that was lacking to make the scene complete was a high-wire act and a tiny car with 15 clowns coming out of it...
link.
Hmmmm. You got a mole in there? (You don't have to answer that.)
Nevermind that there is a double death, if not a double homocide, involved here. As we decide if we want to vacation in the Bahamas, keep Aruba in mind here. As long as Judge Fonz gets his tv show, I guess that all will be made legal in this mess.....
Ever since ANS's death, I haven't been able to stomach any of the 24 hour news outlets. If they're not obsessing over ANS, they're obsessing over Britney Spears. I detest our celebrity culture.
I've been casually following the case and wondering if anybody involved, with the possible exception of Dannielynn, isn't completely messed up.
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