Trayvon Martin trial goes for boring

A few days ago the United States Supreme Court came down with two landmark rulings in regard to marriage equality.  I first saw this on one of my news feeds, so when I got home I turned on MSNBC to see what the national news media was saying.  To my surprise, they were televising the Trayvon Martin murder trial.  My first thought was that this was just an update since the Supreme Court rulings, while making a lot of people happy, were definitely going to piss off a lot of people.  I was wrong.  Someone high up at MSNBC had decided the trial was the more earth shattering, the more groundbreaking, of the two stories.  Someone decided listening to a supposedly star witness bumble her way through an incoherent testimony was the be all and end all of breaking news stories. How could anybody make such a stupid decision?

 

"Mumble, mumble" she said, "mumble mumble."

 

There is a reason Court TV exists:  courtroom drama is a medium best served by fiction.  In the real world courtroom testimony gets boring very, very fast because it is not regulated by either a plot line or the need for commercial breaks.  When a star witness has difficulty comprehending simple questions things slide into a slowly spinning whirlpool where words and phrases get repeated again, and again, and again.  I endured for about 7 minutes and then I went out into the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher.  News networks are meant to provide you with news, some nearly fatal barbiturate overdose served up in a soupy mess of irrelevance.  Is this trial important?  Yes.  Did that testimony need to be broadcast live?  Hell no!

 

 

This morning I saw a question on one of my news feeds regarding that day's testimony.  "Star Witness or Train Wreck?"  Holy shit, I thought, did that question even need to be asked.