The Joy of CNN

Have you ever been to the Museum of Broadcasting in Washington?  There's an interesting section where you can pull up video of famous, not so famous, and infamous television news broadcasts from way back.  One that I found interesting was of Dan Rather, age 25-max, standing in front of a flaming Vietnamese village, reporting the war.

I come and go on Dan Rather, currently liking him more than usual, but there's no denying that he earned his news stripes.

Which brings us to last night.  I was closing out the evening watching MSNBC when they cut away from regular programming to cover the arrival of Triumph, the Wonder Ship in Mobile.  And it became clear that, as fond as I am of most of the MSNBC on-air personalities, they are television savants rather than fully-rounded newspeople.  The coverage was lame.  In the extreme.

So I switched to CNN.

And that was much better.  I liked it better even though I'm not convinced Erin Burnett isn't one of those same savants, but with a financial focus rather than a political one.  Ditto, on some level,  Anderson Cooper (although at this point that might not be fair).  Still, the news-gathering infrastructure at CNN outstrips MSNBC by a wide margin.

Daughter #2, as listed chronologically rather than by, say, affection, has been badgering me to take her on a cruise as a reward for finishing graduate school.  I quickly called her and reminded her to be careful what she wished for (thus saving, I'm hoping, several grand).  She, I can promise you, is ill-equipped to essentially "live in a porta-potty for a week."

I'll leave you with this ...

This painting, just so we're clear, once appeared on Page Six of the New York Post.