By Robert F. Sanchez, JMI Policy Director
“It was all a dream.” That’s a plot device that TV script writers have often used in recent years to resurrect a character after the overpaid actor and the network or movie studio settled a particularly nasty salary dispute. In that scenario, the character endures a series of pratfalls or perils – even gets shot to death – only to be revived when it turns out the events occurred solely in the character’s dreams. Now, viewers of the mainstream media’s melodramas known as newscasts may be forgiven if they feel that they’re the ones who’ve awakened from a dream. A dream in which a Boston Tea Party led to a revolution that threw off the despotic rule of the British monarchy.You’d never guess that the U.S.A. is no longer a British colony if you judged solely from the media’s worshipful coverage of the London announcement that Prince William is finally engaged to be married. Whoop-de-doo!Indeed, the engagement announcement was the lead story on the broadcast networks’ evening newscasts and on their respective morning shows as well. Never mind that the U.S. is still engaged in fighting two wars abroad, trying to restart the economy, and fending off terrorist plots around the world.The pricey wedding may be months away, but breathless U.S. reporters are rushing to London faster than Boston-area colonists responded to Paul Revere’s call to arms. Expect the kind of wall-to-wall coverage the cable “news” networks usually reserve for missing college students, abducted kids, and slow-speed chases.Fortunately, this wedding – which will cost millions of pounds at a time of unprecedented austerity in the U.K. — is one example governmental excess for which U.S. taxpayers won’t have to foot the bill.Moreover, when it’s all over, Americans who insist on living vicariously may once again devote their full attention to following the scandalous lives of the U.S. version of a royal family: celebrity entertainers and jocks.
2010
