It wasn't that long ago when Crossfire, CNN's goofy establishment shoutfest, was considered a serious detriment to journalism. Well, it took care of itself. The show is being canceled (again).

It's a little sad, really. It's not sad for the loss of Crossfire—the show was always a reductionist, simplistic, awful caricature of genuine political debate, which is one reason it was canceled the first time in 2005, only to be resurrected like a lurching zombie last year. What is sad, just a bit, is the fact that the media has changed so much in so short a time that the show that Jon Stewart held up as the shining symbol of the negative power of the corporate media was eventually felled not by its own substantial flaws, but by technology that moved on without it. The internet, "third screens," blah blah blah, only old people watch cable news shows now, anyhow. It would have been nice if the good and thoughtful political pundits of the media (whoever they are) had been able to slay this (resurrected) version of Crossfire by offering their own better alternative. Instead, it just got left behind by the world at large. Just another victim of hundreds of layoffs at CNN.

Almost exactly ten years to the day after Jon Stewart fileted it, it's not getting replaced by some kind of meaningful political journalism. It's getting replace by THE GOD DAMN INTERNET. America's appetite for garbage will never recede.