Weekend Beach Bum 

For Christmas, I got enough books to start a library. And with the near-Arctic weather we’ve had for January and February, I’ve had plenty of time to read. So far, I’ve devoured the hilarious and thoughtful The Funny Thing Is… by Ellen DeGeneres; Running With Scissors, a most unusual memoir by author Augusten Burroughs; and I’m halfway through Pat Conroy’s The Water Is Wide, detailing his experiences as a teacher on a secluded, backward island off the coast of the Carolinas. I also fell in love with Al Franken, happily devouring two of his brilliant books, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Al Franken for President, indeed.

One section in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them has reverberated in my head frequently as of late. In this particular chapter, Al Franken exposes the myth of our so-called "liberal media." Most conservatives (almost always anti-gay, by the way) love to purport that our media leans further left than the famed Tower of Pisa. Al Franken dispels this assertion with a lot of facts, a few figures, and more than a handful of hysterical anecdotes. The truth is, as Franken asserts, that the media does not have a liberal bias—rather, it simply does not report things with the right-wing slant and moral judgments conservatives would like to hear. If anything, Franken proves, the American media has a slightly conservative slant. In a perfect world, of course, the media should place no slant or bias on its news stories. The job of any newscaster worth his or her weight in peanuts is to report exactly what has happened, not to comment on it, but I do agree that our media has a slightly conservative bias.

My main issue with the media is not how they cover the news, but what they cover. I’ve hated the local news shows ever since I can remember, with their sappy feel-good local-man-finds-missing-dentures-and-returns-them-to-grateful-grandpa stories. I don’t need to know about the state of pothole repair on Main Street or the tragic tale of an entire block of houses losing power for two hours because someone crashed into an electric pole. Call me a cultural snob, but I want to focus on the bigger issues—why our soldiers are dying (one per day) in a country that posed absolutely no threat to us; where the Democratic Presidential hopefuls stand on the major issues; and how President Bush has single-handedly ruined the best economy in the history of the world. (Now there’s a liberal slant for you.) As a tribute to our slightly-to-the-right media, I’d like to offer my views on three of the biggest news stories of late.

Two people in the news have become such a huge media phenomenon that, in order to save precious airtime, their names had to be combined: BENNIFER. In my head, the name conjures horrifying images of a two-headed, gargantuan, though Hollywood-chic monster gobbling up every wedding planner in this great land. If Entertainment Tonight and E! were the only media to cover this "story" nonstop, I could accept that. That’s show business. However, when the on-again/off-again engagement status of a poor actor and an even less-talented singer/dancer/actress makes the headlines of major national papers and newscasts, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach about the sad state of our culture.

TODAY’S HEADLINE: JENNIFER TELLS BEN IT’S OVER.

BY THE WAY: Children are being kidnapped; the AIDS epidemic is eating Africa alive; genocide is the rule of the land in parts of the world, the American deficit is out of control, and gay people still can’t get married.

Nothing gets my vote for Most Ridiculous Media Coverage like our musical stars. When Madonna kissed Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera during their performance at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, the subsequent shock waves were off the Richter Scale. Madonna’s and Britney’s kiss was dubbed "The Kiss Heard ‘Round the World," suggesting that the second-long smooches were just as important as the start of the Revolutionary War. And we wonder why our children think MTV is better than the History Channel. As a sidenote, perhaps the kiss would not have been so shocking if we allowed "real lesbians" the opportunity to show loving affection on TV, instead of hailing two straight women locking lips awkwardly in a publicity stunt.

Speaking of music scandals, I truly am sorry, Mrs. Jackson. The matriarch of the musical Jackson tribe must sometimes wish she had told her husband to beat it before they had children and had to endure endless scandals from her nasty boys and girls. My boyfriend teases me about being a Michael Jackson fan, but I am not. I simply think that he deserves—just like every other American—to be tried in a court of law, not in the court of public opinion. I don’t know if he’s guilty, and unless I’m serving on his jury, it’s not up to me to decide. And of course, the media will not let us forget about Janet Jackson’s unexpected exposure at the Super Bowl halftime show. I’m considering reworking a Shakespearean classic to memorialize the scandal—Much Ado About a Breast. 51% of the world’s population has a pair of breasts, most of the remaining 49% are often staring at them, and many of us suckled at them at one point. It’s just a breast. Get over it. I don’t really care if it was intended, and I don’t want millions of dollars of the tax payers’ money pouring into the FCC so those boobs can investigate Janet’s boob. Besides, stars wouldn’t expose themselves and suck face on stage if the media didn’t hype it so much, but that’s how they make a buck.

The day before I wrote this column, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, relying on decades of American history showing that "separate but equal" just doesn’t work, mandated the State Legislature to institute gay marriage, not simply civil unions. Media coverage of this decision is still unfolding, but already, I’ve read a lot more statements from people opposing the decision than from those who support it. I think Al Franken would agree with me—where’s the liberal media now? Gay people usually get the short end of the stick in media coverage. Just look at the sitcom characters that represent us on television, and the LGBT pride rallies where the only camera shots show an eight-foot tall drag queen or two scantily clad men exchanging saliva. In the end, I don’t think our media is extremely liberal or conservative.