Reporting yesterday on the death of Christopher Glenn, I said I was unable to find a video I could embed here of one of his "In the News" segments. Well, what I couldn't do, Joey Helleny did. He sent me the link to the clip below and I'm afraid it's on a rather frivolous topic. One of the things I liked so much about Mr. Glenn's little segments that ran betwixt cartoons on CBS Saturday mornings was how he'd take a pretty heavy subject — say, a war or a complex U.N. clash — and distill it down to simple sentences. What we could use today is —
Wait. Let's watch this video first and then I'll rattle on about what we could use today. Here's an "In the News" segment about cherry blossoms…and stick with it after the end if you want to see an old McDonald's commercial…
Now then. What we could use today is someone who could do something that might be called "News for Dummies" with the same non-emotional attention to the basics. There's a reporter named Jeff Stein who's been going around Washington lately, quizzing Senators, Congressfolks and other movers and shakers as to whether they know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. As he writes here, an amazing percentage of them do not…and these are the people who have some responsibility to oversee our efforts in Iraq. You can imagine how informed your average American must then be on this matter.
If I were running CNN or MSNBC or Fox News right now, I'd put on a show that would just summarize the basics of what's going on in the world, explaining this kind of thing. I don't know if I'd market it for kids but if I did, I'd make it clear in the promos that adults could certainly tune in and learn a thing or three. Given the way the news business has evolved, the hard part might be finding someone to run it. But whoever I got, I know the first thing I'd do after I hired them. I'd make them study every tape I could find of Christopher Glenn.