2/1/2003 » TV

I detest TV news with a passion: endlessly repetitive, content-free reporting, useless reaction stories (I change the channel when Judy Woodruff or Connie Chung comes on), inarticulate speeches by a squint-eyed, affirmative action president, the jockeying by reporters, presidents and governors to make careers, to scramble over one another interviewing family members when they need to be left alone, to issue meaningless proclamations angling for political advantage; the stock graphics for 'A Nation Mourns,' turning an engineering disaster into a cereal box. It irritates me so much that I feel like breaking thing after watching it for half an hour.

And amid all the histrionics, not a word on the real issue: Why did it happen?