crazy with a side of the news.

CNN's Rick Sanchez, as mocked by The Daily Show's John Stewart, reminds me of a comically frightening incident in college that involved an inebriated male friend, a hallway, some saltine crackers and a side dish of crazy (say it in your head like "CA-RAY-ZEE" for the appropriate effect). More on that in a bit.

Television news delivery has taken a weird turn. It's so...aggressive lately. Rick Sanchez does things that buck the old stoic delivery format. He shrugs, raises his eyebrows, pops his lips, triple-blinks, dramatically removes his reading glasses, uses emphatic hand gestures (when was the last time you even saw a broadcaster's hands unless they were shuffling their notes?) and he loudly (and comically I might add) emphasizes some key words in a much higher register. He flirts with Dana Bash, startles whatever co-anchor is with him, badgers the weather reporter and makes Wolf Blitzer look like a weird caricature of a severe 19th century politician. It's entertaining, but kind of crazy. I'm so lost in the delivery, I often totally miss the news. By the time I've regained my focus, he's saying something like, "listen PEOPLE (loud and high)...don't throw crap in the ocean!" while running footage of a diver removing an Aerobie frisbee from around a shark's neck. HUH? What the...? Egads. He just used the word fisticuffs.

I have a host of great memories from time spent at a fraternity that was two houses away from my college sorority. A great group of smart, fun guys, several of whom I am still friends with 20 years later. One memory is totally insignificant, but when I watched John Stewart compare Sanchez to a coked-out friend, I laughed out loud remembering being cornered in the fraternity hallway by an inebriated friend who was spewing bits of saltine crackers. He leaned in, eyeballed us (a girl friend and I) with a crazy (say it in your head like "CA-RAY-ZEE" for the appropriate effect) glazed-over look, spewing cracker bits as he talked with incredible intensity, I gather to make sure we heard him. I have zero memory of what was so important for us to hear, but I can still visualize those cracker bits flying out of his mouth as we were beside ourselves cringing and laughing in total terror! THIS is how the current trend in news delivery feels to me.

Sanchez is not the only John McEnroe/Howard Dean-esque broadcaster on the scene. Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace, Joy Behar, Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann (oddly, the only one who I can see past the delivery and kind of enjoy)...even Anderson Cooper can sometimes scare the crap out of me. Larry King looks like the Dalai Lama in comparison. I don't know what the answer is because I imagine it's all about standing out, making an impact and being heard in the saturated information market, but not only am I often totally lost, there's really no delivery difference between a story on the Haitian earthquake and a shark swimming around with a purple frisbee on its neck. The "Breaking News" crawl has turned into the modern-day equivalent of crying wolf. I would challenge the back room network stiffs to stop insulting our intelligence and give us some grey! We can take it! We can figure out that a story about a shark is supposed to be light and fun - takes the edge off of the story about thousands and thousands of homeless orphans on a small Caribbean island. Rick Sanchez doesn't have to spew crackers at the interactive map guy during the tsunami coverage. Give us some diversity in the intensity of the delivery that is more consistent with real life. You know, the sphere where the news actually happens. Something's gotta give. Maybe Katie Couric's numbers will start to go back up.