2014 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. You probably don't even remember why
A lot of bad things happened in 2014, and chances are, you don’t remember what they were or know if they are still happening because the network that promises to “go there” oftentimes just doesn’t.
The 24-hour cable news media resembles a group of kids playing soccer: there is no strategy, just a raw, run, get it response. But that’s too simple a metaphor. Imagine instead nine soccer fields laid in three rows of three, with 198 8-year-old players running after all of those balls, irrespective of origin, and just trying to shoot. Plays happen in bursts, with no resolution. The score can only go higher, but no one can win, and the game will never end. You are one of the parents, and you hate many of the other parents. Also, your iPhone battery is dead.
Cable news is the soccer game where both teams lose but the rich kids still get to go out for pizza anyway.
Some critics credit viral social media news with intensifying this phenomenon – here is a Midwestern man who tried to avoid prosecution for sex with a deer because it was dead or a West Midlands sheep rapist you would never have heard about, “Like” this picture to receive more stories from BLASTHOLE MEDIA – but that’s letting the media off too easy. The boundless space of the internet allows for room to print stories’ resolutions; links join the sensational start of a news item to its less spectacular – but more soothing – end. There is a feeling of wholeness; an event may have been insensible, but its context makes sense.
You will not find that on cable news. Because it is part of my job, I watched moreCNN than ever in 2014, and I am the dumber for it. I am more convinced than ever that CNN’s purpose is to let you know that something is on fire and that Gloria Borger does not like the way that the men fleeing the building – screaming, and trying to put out the blaze in their mustaches with frenzied Stooge-slaps to their agonized faces – will impact, say, Rick Santorum in 2016.
Because my editors hate me (more proof here and here and here), they asked me to remember what happened in 2014 – as I experienced it on CNN. If journalism is the first draft of history, this is the one the professor hands back to you marked “see me after class”.
JANUARY
Nothing happened in January because it was too cold.
FEBRUARY
What Happened: Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi. This was very bad, because many journalists were forced to sit on upside-down toilet seats or use undersized closets or order food they didn’t like off misprinted menus. The streets were filled with dogs, which are the grown-up versions of puppies (slideshows of which can restore your faith in humanity). Temperatures were high, which caused the whole mountain to get wet, and many skiers died. The whole thing may also have been a Potemkin Village erected by an autocrat.
What May Actually Have Happened: It was a Potemkin Village erected by an autocrat at ridiculous expense to both people and dogs.
MARCH
What Happened: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared and then it stayed disappeared, for days actually.CNN anchor Don Lemon wasn’t sure if it disappeared into a black hole. Literally nothing else was happening at the same time – except Russia formally annexed Crimea, which NATO might have had to start the Third World War over, according Representative Peter King, Senator John McCain, Senator Lindsey Graham and assorted CNN mainstays who look like a kindergarten production of the Prussian General Staff.
What May Actually Have Happened: Our world was not obliterated by a black hole. Also no one ever found the plane.
APRIL
What Happened: Despite strong opposition from Ann Coulter, who almost stopped it, Michelle Obama and you – Citizen Hashtagger – #broughtbackourgirls with tweets. You did it. You stopped Joseph Kony.
What May Actually Have Happened: The girls were not brought back.
MAY
What Happened: The Thai army overthrew the government, but because it was a military-backed coup unaffiliated with communism, America’s response to Southeast Asia remained a committed “whatever”. Polio made a global comeback; however, since America has a vaccine for polio and it doesn’t sound African, it was impossible to tie it to a conspiracy directed by Barack Obama to poison Americans and seize control of the country – despite the fact that, by contracting polio himself, Obama could have theoretically transformed into Franklin Delano Roosevelt and changed the political make-up of the US supreme court.
What May Actually Have Happened: Everything but the FDR stuff actually happened. Also, the US imposed economic sanctions against Russia, for the Ukraine thing.
JUNE
What Happened: Germany won the World Cup in Brazil in stadiums built on bulldozed poor neighborhoods, horrific income inequality and preposterous government largesse. Also, pageantry! And Pitbull!
What May Actually Have Happened: In a continuing trend, Last Week Tonight with Jon Oliver covered World Cup politics better than almost anyone on TV. (Although Dave Zirin appears on MSNBC, and he wrote this.) Some grade-A thinkpiece-y social justice material about how governments spend more on this shit than keeping their people alive or under roofs was probably withheld from broadcast to make sure viewers wouldn’t be bored by it while watching the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
JULY
What Happened: With all the gravitas of Geraldo Rivera discovering the secret of Al Capone’s vaults, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer smiled and nodded and repeated keywords he heard from an IDF representative seconds before being led on a tour of Hamas tunnels into Israel during rocket attacks against targets in Gaza. Wolf went on to monitor the situation in Operation Protective Edge very closely, eventually debuting a new machine that can generate false equivalencies at a ratio of one per every one sentence.
What May Actually Have Happened: Americans were given the clear message that, “Whatever it was, Hamas started it.”
AUGUST
What Happened: In Northern Iraq, Isis surrounded and besieged ethnic and religious minorities, including Yazidis and Christians. The Christians among them sent out waves of Christianosity to the surrounding group members, endowing them with special Founding Fathers Lifeforce, which is detectable only by Americans in a state of negative liberty. President Barack Obama was castigated for not rescuing the by now “Yazidi Christians”, who hudded on top of the same mountain that Moses came down after God handed him the Constitution. Also, Ferguson, Missouri was going to burn down any minute.
What May Actually Have Happened: Obama temporarily rescued the Christians, but did not defeat Isis, because he was too distracted from not-winning the Third World War in Ukraine. Ferguson did not burn down, but an unarmed 18-year-old boy was shot dead in the streets and the local police seemed more interested in drenching the outraged citizenry in tear gas.
SEPTEMBER
What Happened: Dozens of celebrity nudes were stolen and illegally posted on the internet by a “man” named “4Chan”, who may have been a “system administrator”. Many of the images came from iCloud accounts, which are Apple accounts, and Apple is the 51st American state, and it is bad when bad things happen to Apple. Meanwhile, host of CNN’sReliable Sources Brian Stelter defended fellow CNN host Fareed Zakaria against yet more allegations of plagiarism.
What May Actually Have Happened: Once again, your technology news was brought to you by your dad, who pays $19.99/month for an AOL membership on top of $54.99/month for broadband. Also, Fareed Zakaria is a plagiarist. And also maybe if women don’t want you to see them naked don’t go trying to find pictures of them because that makes you garbage.
OCTOBER
What Happened: Ebola can kill you and is going to kill you.
What May Actually Have Happened: Ebola wasn’t going to kill you and didn’t.
NOVEMBER
What Happened: Obama’s policies suffered a devastating loss and confirmed that the American people have given the GOP a mandate. Anchor Don Lemon came up with a new kind of rape deterrent.
What May Actually Have Happened: The Democrats pushed Obama aside, ran away from their own legislative accomplishments, suffered from an off-year election in which the GOP normally sees greater turnout and lost in many lower-population, historically red states that Obama also lost in 2012 anyway. Don Lemon is still a massive idiot.
DECEMBER
What Is Happening: Lower oil prices and western economic sanctions are causingthe value of the rouble to plummet, causing a run on consumer goods while Putin faces a loss of the only thing that’s kept him in power, whimsy and beefcake photos this long: economic stability. He may decide to start World War Three, which Obama could have won already if he’d only started it in March when the GOP Chickenhawk Squadron told him to.
What Will Actually Happen: You’re going to eat too much at Christmas.
So there you have it: the world and hysterical catastrophe journalism where anchors go on location to interview other anchors rather than anyone else involved have come a long way in the last year. It’d be silly not to expect more. Like the retraction buried on A20 two weeks after the scandalous headline above the fold on A1, the full story isn’t sexy, and it isn’t worth sticking around for. Nobody’s watching every night to see them fail to #BringBackOurGirls. But you can make a lot of something from nothing – even specific ratings surges from the explanation and search for nothing, or the existential threat of nothing. Who knows what adventures we’ll have between now and the time this show becomes unprofitable.
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