Who Needs South Park, Anyway?

A couple of days ago, I witnessed a true media event. It seems that Hillary and Barack made up and are now going forward together in “unity”. Why, even one of Hillary’s supporters says that she now likes Obama because Hillary says it’s O.K. to! To emphasize the rapproachment between the two, they rode a plane seated together to New Hampshire, where they addressed a small, circularly-seated crowd in the remote town (if you want to call it a town) of Unity. Unity sounds like the kind of name that Stephen King would use in one of his novels (like Misery, for example). And it wasn’t all that far away from King’s state of Maine, either. Come to think of it, from the air, that assembly reminded me a bit of Pet Sematary! Although the crowd itself was small, one report claimed that in the New Hampshire Primary, Clinton and Obama ran neck and neck in Unity: each received one vote. So, anyway, the cable news channels were giving this meeting top live coverage. With speaker after speaker coming up to address the crowd. While watching the preliminary coverage, I noticed a headline news flash going by on the bottom of the screen: Obama’s tie matches Hillary’s pantsuit! And the announcers then sat around discussing the significance of this, wondering whether it was planned or just a good omen. Well, that just about does it for me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything covered so uncritically by the media as this contrived, staged event was. And I support Obama and would like to see Clinton on the ticket! If I were one of the folks working for the satirical show South Park (of which I recently saw an episode of them mercilessly taking apart the Walmart Corporation), I would simply animate the characters, stick a few regular cast members subtly into the plot, and otherwise show this story straight without any degree of exaggeration, especially about how it was reported. But who needs South Park, anyway? Just turn on the news!