Dept of novel ideas

There is a growing epidemic of missing persons, according to Fox News announcer Greta Van Susteren.

This is an idea so preposterous, so utterly head-up-her-ass, and so utterly unsupported in her essay (linked to from that Mediabistro link) that it makes you want to go missing yourself.

Read that Greta essay, or column, or whatever it is. It has nothing to do with an "epidemic" of missing persons, and everything to do with the epidemic of missing persons news coverage. Every time she comes around to actually supporting the idea with facts, she gets distracted and starts railing against people that are criticizing her and other TV announcers for spending too much time hunting down pretty young white women. The longest section in her piece in which she actually talks about this so-called missing-persons epidemic is:

Here is the plain truth: We have a missing persons problem -- a giant one. The problem includes adults and children. It is here in the United States and overseas.

That's it. Then she goes back to defending her coverage of it. We just have to take her word for it: there's an epidemic, there's a giant problem. Don't support the assertion with facts, just repeat yourself over and over again, and attack your critics. That is exactly the M.O. of Fox News. Man, wouldn't you hate to work there, if you have a brain in your head? Wouldn't you be embarrassed?

Oh -- what I was going to say, before I got carried away, is: if there were such a thing as an epidemic of missing persons (can you even use the word "epidemic" in that way? I don't think so) it would make a good idea for a novel. And that led me to realize, hey, there already is a novel about that -- Left Behind. However, the notion that a Hollywood producer might be raptured is pretty hard to take.

Also: funny Daily Show segment on lite news.

Greta Van Susteren, Fox News, missing persons