Hey, Network TV: If You Can't Say Anything Nice About the Internet, Stop Making Episodes About Bloggers
Last night, CBS's The Good Wife, that show that I think is a fictionalized Silda Spitzer thing, was about people Tweeting scandalous things at each other. Then it literally mentioned Politico blogger Ben Smith, by name. This has to stop.
This is not about Ben! Ben Smith is the most tolerable person at The Politico. He works very hard, and he deserves to have people on TV mention his name as if it is no big thing. It is about how the internet has been around for almost 100 internet-years now, and TV is still scared of it and stupid about it.
Primetime network TV's attempts to address That Internet Thing are universally embarrassing. Back in the old days, something like CSI: New York's Gawker Stalker episode was kind of funny, like a rappin' grandmother. But, like a rappin' grandmother, it was funny once. Soon, something like CSI: Miami's Gawker Stalker episode was just embarrassing, like a post-Bowfinger Steve Martin movie, about an old white guy who, at one point, raps.
So, The Good Wife. I have never watched this show. But while I was watching some other fine CBS programming for old people, I kept seeing previews for this episode, about the Twittering. The clip is even worse than I thought it'd be. The good wife herself is alarmed that someone has said a thing about her on the webs! "This is on the internet?" she asks. It is, Alan "Slumming" Cumming tells her. But even worse: Ben Smith put it up in "a Remainders post."
A remainders post! That is a post where bloggers post links to things, at the end of the day! Now everyone will know about the Tweet!
Meanwhile, the patient on Monday's episode of House was a blogger. Not a celebrity blogger, or a political blogger—just your run-of-the-mill oversharey blogger. And it was ruining her life, this blogging! Always with the staying up and reading comments and letting strangers make medical decisions and the ignoring your boyfriend to blog about your boyfriend! The internet: it is a crazy place for unstable people who don't have Lupus.
Of course, following House was a new episode of the reliably hilarious 24, which featured the demise of an American-born terrorist named Markos, who bore a certain wide-eyed resemblance to certain left-leaning terrorist-sympathizing famous blogger. I never thought I'd say these words, but I admire the subtlety and wit with which 24 displayed it's fear of and contempt for the scary internet.