Karl Klockars

I think I have this memorized.

Like most of the rest of you, I was up at least a little later than I usually am on a Tuesday night.*  Probably unlike most of the rest of you, my news-junkie self was flipping around between three different channels at a stretch, updating my tabbed browing between the Huffington Post, Chicagoist, the Sun-Times webpage, and some pornography just for an occasional break.  At one point, I was so buried in, I didn’t even notice that my wife was hiding underneath the covers in the bedroom, nervous about the results.  What a jerk.

But I took a breath, did a lap around the apartment, hugged the girl and made her some soup, and shook my head clear of the three beers from the afternoon as well as the general intoxication we all had with watching the polls close and the returns come in.  Then, it was back to a relatively  leisurely evening on the couch with the girl I love and the cat I tolerate.  And after we finished toasting our president-elect with a bottle of cheap Trader Joe’s almond champagne, I had a chance to think.

You know who really won this election?  I’ll tell you.

The TV news, the newspapers, and radio press and media have won the hell out of the last two years of election coverage.  Adrianna Huffington has decided that the Internet is the real winner, but that’s too narrowminded for me.  Everyone in the press has had a compelling two-year long story to tell the nation, one that affects all of our lives.  It’s been fun, it’s been contentious, it’s been surprising, and it’s been historic.  (Although I do feel bad for the McCain press corps.  Everyone covering the Obama side probably has a hell of a book to write.  Maybe the Palin people, too.  McCain?  Meh.)

For two years, we’ve been able to employ dozens of reporters, producers and staff to follow around campaigns, candidates, and pundits.  The conversations has (sometimes) been about issues, other times about political scandalry, and for politics junkies it beats the living hell out of the alternative.  It’s been great.  I already miss the primaries, but I suppose we only have to wait two years for it all to start kicking in again and the Rebirth of Palin the Presidential Candidate (tee-hee).

"Dead blonde woman! Film at 11!"

The winners beyond that are the viewers, who have been spared the airtime that otherwise would have been filled with missing blonde girls, missing babies, manufactured outrage and wall-to-wall coverage of random thunderstorms and floods.  If we weren’t in an election year, there would have bene truckloads of media here covering “THE YEAR CHICAGO FLOODED” and you know it.

So for the good of the press, now that they’ve been reduced to discussing boring things like transitions, staff appointments and the like, I’d like to request something of the Universe.  I’d simply like to ask the Realm of Existence to have someone hit Paris Hilton in the face with a shovel.  Strike the cast of the Hills with lightning collectively.  Create some sort of murder-suicide drama involving some starlet du jour that we can collectively freak out about for a week or so.

"That's hoOWWWWWW."

It’ll give the press something to do, of course.  We can reconstitute all the political wags to Starlet-Death-Watch ’08 and slowly dial back the networks to a post-election level.  Newsjunkies can get their minds wrapped around a post-election news world, and we’ll all get a well-needed collective political enema for a few days.

I think we all need about seven days of a moratorium on politics.  Let’s all take a deep breath, the True Believers will turn on Rush no matter what, but for the rest of us, we could all use a little self-imposed vacation from the whole mess.  Let’s all just relax a little bit, chill out, and maybe recreate the Anna Nicole Smith coverage from a while back.  Wouldn’t that be a nice change of pace?

It’s been very nice watching nothing but conversations about things that will actually affect our daily lives.  But now it’s over, and it’s back to the same-old same-old.  Rachel Maddow’s ratings are going to shrink down to normal levels in the wake of the election, unless Obama does a guest shot every week or so.

"We've gotta find a new schtick, Keith."

Olbermann is going to have to find something else to scream about, and it’s most likely just going to turn into a media criticism program – an hour of What’s Wrong With Fox News per night.  The right-wing night-time talk fests will remain unchanged, except that Allan Colmes might have a certain glow about him for the next couple weeks.

Barring any of those events sometime in the next 24 hours or so, I think we should all unplug for about three days, at least.  No going to Politico.com or RealClearPolitics.  Watch cartoons in the AM instead of Morning Joe.  Don’t default to MSNBC in the afternoon, just watch the Food Network or a Top Chef rerun on Bravo.  It’s in all of our best interests.  Then, when someone announces they’re going to start running for president in a week or so, we can get right back into it.

*I’d also like to congratulate our sitting-duck president for staying up past his bedtime to put in a phoner to the president-elect.  He must be tired today!  Up past 9pm?  On a weeknight?  George, I’m amazed.  Good for you.