{"id":16031,"date":"2008-06-28T11:40:01","date_gmt":"2008-06-28T15:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16031.html"},"modified":"2008-06-28T11:40:01","modified_gmt":"2008-06-28T15:40:01","slug":"she-angles-her-belly-button-toward-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/she-angles-her-belly-button-toward-him\/","title":{"rendered":"‘She angles her belly button toward him’"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend J emailed me last night to tell me about CNN’s “Larry King Live” and how the show covered the Obama\/Clinton event in Unity, N.H. last night. In addition to the usual speculation from the usual suspects, King invited on dueling “specialists” — a psychiatrist and a “body language and deception detection expert.”<\/p>\n

I thought J was kidding. She wasn’t.<\/p>\n

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In the first segment, King talked to CNN’s Candy Crowley about the event in New Hampshire, followed by Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. They, of course, are fairly predictable guests, and they shared fairly predictable insights.<\/p>\n

But why on earth would CNN feature a psychiatrist and a “deception detection expert,” neither of whom know the candidates, and neither of whom were even on hand for the rally?<\/p>\n

I was especially amazed to see the “deception detection expert” explain<\/a> to the nation that the position of Hillary Clinton’s navel carries great political significance: “She angles her belly button toward him. She’s treating him with respect. She has her hands in a fig leaf position, which tends to be a passive position, really turning the power over to Obama. We face our belly buttons and the core of our body to people we like, have affinity toward and people we respect. And she’s doing it.”<\/p>\n

For crying out loud — this is CNN?
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\nAnd then, just to make matters slightly worse, Anderson Cooper invited on another<\/i> “body language expert” to offer additional<\/em> “analysis” in the following hour.<\/p>\n

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I’m at a bit of a loss. CNN wants to report on the event? Great, it was a politically significant rally. CNN wants to offer some behind-the-scenes reporting about what went on when the candidates weren’t on stage? Wonderful, that’s what reporters are supposed to do.<\/p>\n

But CNN also wants to let its audience know what Obama and Clinton are thinking<\/i> by having “experts” scrutinize the direction of their navels. <\/p>\n

And American journalism manages to slip just a little further into the abyss.<\/p>\n

The truth is, the rally in Unity was an effective event that went off without a hitch, but in terms of actual news value, there wasn’t a whole lot to say. The candidates looked good, gave good speeches, and shook some hands. It was the first joint public appearance, which in and of itself is newsworthy, but not a whole lot actually happened<\/i>.<\/p>\n

So, CNN is left with all of these hours to fill, talking about an event that didn’t actually produce a lot of news. With that in mind, here’s a radical suggestion — instead of “body language and deception detection experts,” the network can cover the event and then report on other news<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I know, I know, I’m a dreamer….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend J emailed me last night to tell me about CNN’s “Larry King Live” and how the show covered the Obama\/Clinton event in Unity, N.H. last night. In addition to the usual speculation from the usual suspects, King invited on dueling “specialists” — a psychiatrist and a “body language and deception detection expert.” I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}