A Falcon With Clipped Wings

My wife has been convincing me for several different yet related reasons to start showing my face at a public space known as The Gym. I have recently acquiesced to these requests, also for several different yet related reasons. I'm taking advantage of the nearby Navy workout facilities, tucked among the gorgeous seaside cliffs of Point Loma (seriously, we must have one of the prettiest drives on earth to and from a gym), not so much for any pectoral gains or increase in benching abilities, although I'm sure that would be quite nice and my wife would voice her approval. No, the main reason I'm willing to sweat off the calories during 40-minute activity sessions is in the hopes that I'll be better able to turn around and replace those sweated-off calories with additional, tasty calories. I hold firm against the epithet "foodie" - a truly repulsive term, in all honesty - but I will answer promptly to the title Food Lover. And once one approaches their mid-30s, any love affair with food that is not exclusively of the tofu-and-lentils variety may need to be balanced with extra-curricular activities. Shocking news, I know.

But if my waistline and calf muscles are thanking me for this recent attention, my brain and soul are beginning to beg for mercy. Because what seems to go hand-in-hand with gym memberships these days is an agreement to strap one's self in front of communal plasma screens beaming forth the inanities of hyperventilating newscasters spinning endless cycles of fluff and sleaze, 24-hour upon 24-hour. This being a Navy facility, there is a high quotient of televisions showcasing FOX News programs, which I find especially smug and painful, but, honestly, I'm beginning to not be able to tell the difference between Murdoch's empire and the likes of CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, HN. Not to be all prejudiced or anything, but after a while, all bottle-blond anchorladies begin to look the same to me.

Of course, my revulsion when it comes to cable news is compounded by the fact that for the last 10 months or so, we've purposefully gone without any kind of television reception, cable or otherwise. We have a television, all right, but it exists exclusively to play dvds and blu-rays. These days, the only time I come into contact with the graceless, lurching beast that is network television or the cable empires are in hotel rooms, airports, sports bars (I don't go to many of those, granted, but it happens from time to time), other people's homes and, unfortunately, the gym. I can tell you that being away from the likes of Nancy Grace and Anderson Cooper for extended periods of time does not make it any easier to witness them in action. In fact, I find myself standing slack-jawed in amazement at what leaks out of the TV screens, while most everyone else around me seems to be doing an admirable job of barely noticing the on-air action.

It must have been the five-person round table discussion on a lady arrested for cutting in line at a Missouri Wal-Mart that set me off, or maybe it was just the fact that the network kept flashing the same two available photos of the arrested female over and over again, one of which was an undated self-portrait taken from a camera phone. The need to cover local events of little consequence to the nation as a whole - the fact that cable news makes national what once rarely strayed outside the impacted community or even family - has done a great deal to unite Americans in trivial matters that rate high on the plucked-heartstrings or sensationalism meter (missing toddlers, kicked dogs, bar fights, imploding breast implants) while keeping matters of greater national urgency swept under the table or summarized in the most vapid of terms. During a week in which the future of the Afghanistan campaign may be decided, the DowJones reached 10,000 points while unemployment refused to budge an inch, the deficit rose to a record $1.42 trillion, Bank of America posted a third-quarter loss, militant attacks in the Pakistani region of Peshawar continued, and Hamid Kharzai suggested the possibility of a runoff vote, a five-person round table discussing a Wal-Mart arrest in front of a national audience was too much to stomach. I said as much to my wife over dinner that night, comfortable and smug in the cocoon against the madding crowd I'd managed to construct via the simple cancellation of a cable plan.

But pride cometh before the fall, and all that. Because the very next day, while returning from a trip to the tailor, I was stopped by a kind yet addled neighbor who felt the need to tell me I'd better turn on the television, because there was a kid from Colorado trapped in a balloon, and he was at 7,000 feet and heading south and maybe they'd have to send helicopters. I didn't linger too long on this conversation, and changed the subject when I saw him shake his head in bewilderment when I mentioned we didn't get any TV channels (one of the things about not having TV, of course, is the need to constantly mention the fact that you don't have any TV, a trait I'm doing my best to temper). But my interest was piqued, so, new-media guy that I am, I scrolled over to my favorite online news sources and, sure enough, there was a weather balloon that pretty much resembled a silver UFO twisting and turning over the plains of eastern Colorado, with somebody named Falcon Heene reportedly inside it. Helpful links to live cable coverage allowed me to watch, with millions of others, the rather horrifying sight of a runaway contraption carrying a no-doubt-terrified six year old boy inside. I thought to myself how I would most likely have died of fright long before the two-hour mark, wondered at what the parents had been thinking, and hoped for a safe landing, against all odds. In short, I had been sucked into an "as-it-happens" drama by a leading cable purveyor. The story had it all - the possibility of peril, drama in the sky, a chance to cast judgment on shoddy parenting, even a quintessentially ludicrous 21st century child's name.

Of course, when the balloon landed safely in a plowed farmer's field only to yield no passengers, suspicions and hackles were raised. When reports surfaced that the family had earlier appeared on two episodes of the loathsome reality program Wife Swap, tongues were clucked. When the boy magically appeared from a box stored inside the family garage under the glare of media lights, brows became raised further. And when Wolf Blitzer managed to nudge out of the mouths of babes what many of us had been thinking all along (talk about riveting television - the father's agonizingly long pauses and horrible attempts at acting are as cringe-worthy as anything on The Office), and the dreaded words "we did it for the show" were uttered on live television, it was time to step back and wonder what somebody like Tristan Tzara or Allan Kaprow might have made of a stunt that basically consisted of large chunks of the American population watching an empty balloon float across the heartland. I've heard media pundits refer to this as a "Punk'd" moment, but the collision between reality and "reality TV" and the interplay between competing narratives and audience manipulation elevates it far beyond the frathouse humor of Ashton Kutcher. This was genius, of a sort.

So, once again, I tried to make my peace with mainstream 21st century American media entertainment. In good faith, I joined forces with millions of my fellow Americans to watch an unfolding narrative that offered thrills, chills and wonders. If I spent any time near a watercooler, no doubt it would have been something to jaw about. But in the end, I allowed myself to be sucked into the morass of non-stop coverage and faulty fact-checking, of sensationalism and overreaction, of the need to fill airtime with chatter and blather. It was a moment that lampooned both the nature of contemporary media and society's willingness to play predetermined roles as passive spectators. As a friend of mine commented as the pieces began to fall into place, "Dear Jon Stewart. You're welcome. Love, Falcon Heene".