This is your life on news:
“Jennifer Love Hewitt is pregnant!” “Late-night mocks Douglas sex story.” “It’s ‘all awesome’ for ‘Pacific Rim’ writer.” “Kim Kardashian finalizes divorce.” “Bachelorette guys rap the ‘right reasons.'” “Who won the year’s top fashion awards?” “Tonys Tuesday: ‘Cinderella’ stars.”
Those were all headlines from the main “Life” section page on USA Today when I moseyed over there yesterday afternoon. All of them extremely relevant to your lives, I know! Even me, sitting snugly in the confines of the Plugged In offices (cubicles of a particularly glorious gray hue), obsessed and concerned with all things entertainment as I am, couldn’t care less about a single story. Except, of course, that main, big-print/big-picture centerpiece in the middle of the webpage: “Ron Burgundy’s jazz flute headed to museum.”
What!? My attention was now undivided.
Here’s what the story says, in part:
The Newseum, the Washington, D.C., museum dedicated to the news media and the first amendment, will host an exhibit featuring one of the media’s greatest champions of freedom — Ron Burgundy. The exhibit will also feature the whip used by rival anchorman Arturo Mendes (Ben Stiller) during the gang fight scene between rival news teams and a re-creation of the KVWN-TV anchor desk and news set. The exhibit opens Nov. 14, which just happens to coincide with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, opening on Dec. 20.
I must now, it appears, amend any and all cynicism that has taken root in my mind about the kinds of inane things we read every day on the Internet. This was an important development. This story had weight and depth. It meant something.
It meant that even museums are so starved for attention that one devoted to real news was spending time and money and devoting space to a fake newsman.
Now, I know this isn’t anything new. Museums and other culture institutions have been co-opting pop culture for decades. But it says something about us, I think, that they have to. We’re so enamored with our entertainment that we can’t be pulled away from it for long, even for a fun, educational museum visit.
The USA Today story went on to record this explanation for the museum’s embrace of the raunchy Will Ferrell comedy, in the form of a press release from Cathy Trost, vice president of exhibits and programs at the Newseum:
The exhibit explores the reality behind the humor of Anchorman and tracks the rise of personality-driven news formats in the 1970s.
Call me convinced?
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