Newsircus Maximus

My grey haired old mother called Channel 25 the local Fox affiliate, "a blood and guts station".
This was a pretty safe observation given the fact that the 10pm News was blathering on about a stabbing somewhere...
I told her to call up their 1-800 snitchline and in her best little-old-lady voice report the detonation of a five kiloton nuclear device in Lexington's Depot Square.
I then made her a ten dollar bet that the Fox 25 operator would ask if there were any witnesses while simultaneously dispatching a reporter and news van-just in case.
***
All heavy handed kidding aside, Channel 25's local news operation is a model of gruesome prurience...when it isn't a stabbing, a shooting or better yet a nice bloody explosion it's unselfconscious puffery on behalf of some Fox entertainment program.
Prurience is said to be the advance guard of illiberalism.
Fair enough, but it also promotes an anti-rational superstitious agenda wherein the universe is divided between a constantly changing pantheon celebrity godheads and the prospect of sudden graphic violence.
Thus we are supposed to be impressed that Jennifer Lopez visited Ben Affleck's ancestral duplex even as vacation houses spontaneously detonate in New Hampshire and rip tides drown toddlers in Connecticut.
Channel 25's news room just can't wait for an asteroid to collide with the earth...no doubt they've already got the garish graphics stored on their hard drives and a list of local astrologers and gossip columnists to consult when we enter the annihilation orbit.