Fortified with Irony

One of the events that never fails to bring a smile to my face is when the media reports on the media. Nothing is more chortle coaxing than watching someone with a microphone stand amidst the choas outside the Michael Jackson courthouse or the Terry Schiavo house-of-comfortable-resting, sadly commenting on the "media circus" that seems to have sprung up around our lone and intrepid reporter who is just there to cover the story.

So you can surmise my delight when Brigitte Quinn intoned on Fox Live: "When we come back, the Natalee Holloway case.... what is it about this story that has so thoroughly gripped the nation? We'll talk to our panel of experts and find out!" My sides were already preparing for the ache.

As it turns out, their panel of experts consisted of Tony Trupiano, a "syndicated talk show host", Michelle Malkin, a "syndicated columnist", and Kinky Friedman, a "musician, author". Now I must confess ignorance as to who any of these people were, but Mr. Friedman had arrived wearing a rhinestone studded black cowboy hat and chewing on a large unlit cigar. My interest piqued, I looked him up on Amazon and found out that he is the author of "17 mystery novels whose main character is... Kinky Friedman." Hmmm...

Well, Brigitte called them experts and she's the Fox Live anchor so she must know what she is talking about.

Brigitte starts off with a few mentions of how Fox has been all over this disappearance from the very beginning and it just seems like people can't get enough of the case. Now, I'm wondering how exactly it is that the good people at Fox know this. I seriously doubt they are doing any cold calls or polling to find out what their audience wants to see reported. I checked their web site and there is no poll for "Which Fox Story are YOU Sick Of?"

So imagine my utter amazement when she throws it over to Tony, who promptly says that his audience has been calling in to say they could care less about this story, that it is only of interest to the girl's family and maybe some people in her hometown. It is a shame she got herself disappeared, and he has sympathy for her parents, but that's where it ends. Whaaaa...?

This is clearly not the answer Brigitte expected. So she tries Michelle. My jaw drops a little further as Michelle agrees with Tony, and goes on to say that she receives email from her readers, "some of Fox's core viewers", featuring words like "overkill" and "enough already".

With one more bullet in the chamber, Brigitte gamely asks Kinky's opinion. He pulls out his cigar long enough to say, "I'm fascinated by this story. But you need a Miss Marple or a Lt. Columbo down there, somebody with brains running the whole thing..."

...

So while I did not get the guffaws out of this exchange that I was so looking forward to, I did come away with one prediciton: the 18th mystery novel will revolve around Kinky Friedman solving the disappearance of a hot blonde girl in an exotic island locale.

You heard it here first, folks!