FULL OF SOUND AND FURY AND SIGNIFYING NOTHING

A FEW MINUTES OF "ACCIDENTAL" VIEWING REMINDS ME WHY I CAN'T BEAR CNN ANY MORE

This afternoon, while I was looking for something to watch during a lull in FoxNews's convention coverage, nothing of interest on MSNBC or CNBC, and interim remarks on C-SPAN, I accidentally changed my channel to CNN.

Once upon a time, CNN was the only cable news network. Alas, while competition has improved the field, it has not helped Ted Turner's increasingly left-spinning network to become better. It was far more reliable during the first Gulf War, when it was covering the event non-stop for 72 hours. The program I landed on was "Crossfire," which has also seen better days.

Once upon a time, "Crossfire" was a major player in the political debate game. It was feisty, but intelligent. It was entertaining and informative without being irritating.

Nowadays, it has four hosts instead of two--though I confess I only know this from the credits; the few moments I saw of James Carville and Robert Novak were enough for me. Evidently, though, it also features Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. I am sorry to report that Novak has not aged well, and Carville is a better strategist than an analyst. It also seems to have been filmed at a diner full of Democrats, who frequently cheered Carville's demented rants.

But, wait. I'm not letting Novak off the hook on this one. Though I don't fault him for having no supporters in the CNN diner, he did not, in my opinion, do conservatism proud. While Carville came across as plainly crazed, Novak seemed slightly drunk. Both stumbled over their words several times, in a way that would have gotten them fired from any self-respecting network on the first day. Also, some kind of bell kept going off, evidently signaling that it was time to move from one issue to the next. Setting the tone, at the top of the show, Carville ran his lines into Novak's, who promptly corrected him. Not only was it politically uninformative and unhelpfully uncivil--it was unprofessional, as well.

I have seen this program only a few times in the last year or so, but each time I am saddened to see the state it is in. Carville is not suited to a program in which he is expected to have any kind of civil discourse, and Novak's bluster has lost its luster.

In fact, CNN itself is really only a shell of its former self. From its glory days under the first Bush administration, it quickly degenerated with the new administration, becoming such a lapdog for the Clinton Administration that conservatives began referring to it as the "Clinton News Network." We should not be surprised that the network owned by leftist Christian-basher Ted Turner has become another mouthpiece for anti-Bush-administration propaganda, though they labor to make it seem "fair and balanced," since Fox has been destroying them lately in the ratings.

But they are neither fair nor balanced. Their left bias is evident in their news reporting, and their supposedly rightist commentators tend to be vastly overmatched by mad dogs like Carville. Then, too, the Larry King we used to know has been replaced by a softball-tossing poodle. Remember when King made headlines when Perot announced his presidential candidacy? One will wait a long time before his program makes any news.these days. A smart politician would be better off announcing something on Jon Stewart's fake news show. It probably gets better ratings.

Then, too, CNN seems to have been "Bloombergized" to a point beyond human comprehension. Switch over there in the middle of the day and you're hard pressed to figure out where the news is, with multiple bands of scrolling headlines scattered all over the frame--not to mention the weather, for which those who have CNN probably already have a whole channel.

It's sensory overload, and, in the end, it has the same news as FoxNews and MSNBC. When my kids were first learning to read, I got a television with closed captioning because I figured it would help them learn words (little did I know how often the transcription is faulty). Now, however, there is so much informational debris in the ocean of news that there's no room for the closed captioning.

So, if you want a headache, go to CNN. If you want news and discussion, stay with FoxNews. And if you want to find out whatever happened to John McEnroe, join the hundreds of people watching CNBC. (Sorry, Dennis Miller. I love you, but you've picked the wrong pony this time.)