Thursday morning started with the death of every 17-24 year old from the 70’s Farrah Fawcett. A beautiful sexy woman who captivated the desires of boy’s everywhere (me included). A wonderful tribute to her, but the real news dominated the day. Fast forward 6 hours when we first heard that Michael Jackson had collapsed. What followed after Glenn Beck will have repercussions for a long time (that will be 5 days). Why so short? Two words Keith Oberman. He has as many followers on MSNBC as I do on Twitter or this blog (lol). CNN won’t last long because all they have is Lou Dobbs. ABC, CBS, and NBC well need I say more. What will hurt Fox News is in viewership to National Geographic Channel (NatGeo) or maybe the Animal Planet when it covers wild animals the world over.

Seriously though, they must pay some sort of penalty for pushing serious news off the channel not shortened or blocked for an hour, but off for eight hours. I received an email from the website “Move America Forward” who tracks the lives of soldiers who are fighting for Sheppard Smith’s right to be stupid for a day. In the fifth paragraph of the article noticed the coverage and made a simple request to honor our troops as much as we did Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Those men and women should be the ones we set aside a huge block of time to honor. When was the last time we put them in every hour block of news? A long, long time.

The huge majority of us have earned the right to be treated with respect, and when you email the show to give your opinion about a subject Sheppard Smith should not tell you to “Shut up” as he did a few months ago to an emailer, or Bill O’Reilly telling emailers to “wise up” when you write in as he asks you to. We put up with it because they overall give us the news we need to make decisions about who represents us in Washington D.C. I think that deference might be over. If that is the case what will become of the only channel that “reported and let us decide.” We cannot stop supporting FNC, but some sort of penalty needs to be imposed to remind them that we are the ones to whom they report. Like politicians who forget to whom they report so to is it with the media in general and FNC in particular.