Roger Ailes once offered this McLuhanesque statement: "The story of the second half of the 20th century is the story." That is, the medium isn't just the message, it provides the structure for the narrative of reality itself. As TCG has often said, the news is the ultimate reality show.
That point was taken a step further in Neal Gabler's book from a decade or so ago, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.
Speaking of Neal Gabler, the subject of reality and fiction and reality-based fiction came up on "Fox News Watch" over the weekend; the subject was the nuking of America, as seen on the Fox broadcast show "24." As Jim Pinkerton, a fellow panelist alongside Gabler, put it, "An attack like that is coming, and we all know it."
So is it good or bad to talk about it on cable news? TCG thinks it's good to think about the bad, and here's why. Thinking back to the Tom Clancy novel, Debt of Honor, which imagined a suicide jet-liner crashing into the Capitol, it's worth reflecting that if our homeland defenders had had more imagination, they might have seen the 9-11 attacks coming, and taken better precautions against them.
And so today, with "24," we might study fiction yet again, with the idea of keeping this particular "movie" from playing out in real life.
Thanks to Mark Finkelstein and NewsBusters for catching the quote, and providing the link!
