One thought on “Ron Burgundy is a lesson in what NOT to do in journalism”

1. So is Emily Rooney…so, I have to say, is this interview.

   What is absolutely astounding about this to me is that even though Emily comes right out and says that journalists take themselves too seriously, the entire piece is a cringe-worthy exercise in self-importance and self-seriousness.

   “Anchorman” is satire, and the idea that satire needs to be deconstructed just entirely misses the point. And it’s kind of sad – though tremendously enlightening, in terms of explaining the tripe I see on network television – that this is what passes for serious discussion.

   To be clear, there is undeniably a useful conversation to be had about the way in which Anchorman holds up a mirror to the degraded, defiled, dubious state of TV journalism. But that conversation would require some self-knowledge, and an acknowledgement that the industry which once gave the world Morrow, Cronkite and Jennings is now a hyper-engineered exercise in lowest common denominators, inoffensiveness and societal sedation. That the gar-bage poured into the heads of Americans has promoted ignorance, false-equivalency, breathlessness and all of the other crimes against social and political enlightenment which has made it impossible to have the kinds of conviction which led to things such as the Great Society and drove a crook like Nixon from office.

   I’m terribly sorry, but Emerson, as one of the main trade schools behind this defilement of a once-great calling, is itself the butt of the Anchorman joke. Sad that it is not, itself, in on it.