Llewellyn
King
Read Llewellyn's bio and previous columns
December 16, 2007
Fox News Alert!
Christ is Born in Bethlehem!
On the eve of
Christmas, here is a thought: Are we in the media up to covering the
story of Christmas? Imagine that time is a continuum, having no
beginning or end, so that what is past is yet to come, and what is to
come has already happened. Hold on, this is not crazy.
Mathematicians have
been wrestling with this possibility for a long time. Now imagine that
you are sitting on the Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, in the
executive suite of one of the great cable television networks. Yes, Fox.
An excited scientist
from one of our great national laboratories is explaining to a room full
of Fox executives and news producers that scientists at a government
laboratory have found a tear in time, and they believe that a reporter
could travel through the tear to cover the first Christmas.
The room is
electrified. “The greatest story ever told, and we are there,” shouts a
young producer.
“Sounds like a job
for Bill O'Reilly,” says the wily boss of Fox, Roger Ailes, deftly
slipping a candy into his mouth.
Another producer,
who has already accepted early retirement, demurs: “O'Reilly is not a
reporter, he's a commentator. We need somebody who can interview without
interrupting.” Everyone scowls at the departing producer.
“How about Geraldo
Rivera? It's his kind of thing,” says an ambitious young woman, who
hopes that Ailes will notice her contribution.
“No, not him,” Ailes
says. “He hasn't found Al Capone's treasure yet. Nobody believes
Geraldo.”
The scientist takes
the floor again. He explains, “The time tear is at the end of B.C. 1, so
you could be on location at the manger in Bethlehem, Joseph, but there
are limits. The tear is small. We discovered it at the end of a very
complex calculation, and only one person can get through it. Your
reporter will need transport when he or she arrives, and the options are
a camel or a donkey. Your reporter's camera and recording equipment will
have to be concealed. And in order to talk to anyone, he or she will
have to speak Hebrew.”
“No donkey,” says a
senior Fox producer. “We are not going to give the Democrats a boost.”
Ailes's face clouds.
The thought of Bill O'Reilly, his greatest asset, traveling into time on
a camel worries him. Suppose the hateful people at MSNBC get a video of
Bill on a camel, riding into time? Ailes shudders. Suppose O'Reilly
berates a Roman soldier, and gets a broad sword across his neck for his
impertinence.
One producer asks,
“What about the other networks? CNN's Wolf Blitzer speaks Hebrew.”
“And Glenn Beck
speaks in tongues,” another producer adds.
Fox executives, who
were dreaming of the greatest TV spot ever sold, are beginning to
realize that the greatest story ever told is turning into the greatest
risk ever taken.
Disconsolate, people
start shuffling out of the room, calculating the chances of an upset in
Iowa on their clipboards.
The most ambitious
of the ambitious young producers approaches the scientist from the
national laboratory.
“Have you got any
way at the laboratory of proving that Obama is a Muslim, or that Hillary
is a communist?” he asked. “That's the kind of story we need this
Christmas. It would be a huge gift to our viewers.”
© 2007 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Click here to talk to our writers and
editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.
To e-mail feedback
about this column,
click here. If you enjoy this writer's
work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry
it.
This
is Column # LK021.
Request permission to publish here. |