The "Plane" is a poor substitute for the O.J. Simpson saga:
From that moment all those years ago when the jury came back with a "Not Guilty" verdict, the cable channels, but particularly CNN, have been searching for an analagous story. The multifactorial interests of OJ involved celebrity, sports, mystery, dead people, glamor, Hollywood, judicial process, families, and lawyers with varying degrees of star-quality. It was the perfect storm and the perfect story and no one in their heart-of-hearts could be absolutely certain of his guilt or innocence, despite their prejudices in all directions.
I do not believe that there will be such a story again in my lifetime. But that does not stop these programmers from trying to invent one out of whole cloth. I needn't reiterate the lunacy which has accompanied the coverage of this seeming-tragedy, but it contains some elements such as mystery, (ostensible-but-not-certain) dead people, glamor of air travel (well, you know what I mean), the official process of the countries and the organizations whose job it is to monitor and regulate air travel, lawyers/"experts", and grieving families.
This formula as utilized by cable channels, CNN in particular, is useful to boost ratings and thus to collect more advertising revenue. It is working to some degree but it is minor league compared to the "wondrous" television which the whole OJ experience brought us.
As an addendum: for the "record", I do not believe that in the early 1990's we would have a broadcaster who would state that since the plane has "disappeared" then it not wholly unreasonable to conjecture that the Almighty Himself may have had something to do with it as Don Lemon implied the other day. I would submit to him that God was tired of watching Super Bowl reruns and decided to rapture these two hundred plus souls, since he reported the story that half of football fans believe that God decided the winner of the Big Game.
How far we've fallen in so short a time....
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