Entertainment

Charlie, what did we do to deserve thee?

What goes around, comes around, Part I:

And now it’s time to reap the whirlwind . . .

Can’t help but feel that in Charlie Sheen’s predeceased state, CBS is getting pretty much what it deserves.

For years, the network’s promos for his popular “Two and a Half Men” sitcom were produced and presented in this inescapably obvious manner:

A CBS operative would scour the next scheduled show, on the lookout for the show’s most vulgar, inappropriate rim-shot moments.

And those moments would be selected as that week’s promos for the show, plugged in around the clock for all to behold. These cynical and purposeful come-ons appeared in ambush form.

Charlie Sheen didn’t do that to CBS; CBS did that to CBS — and to you, and you, and you, whether you liked it or not.

Several Thanksgiving afternoons ago, during CBS’s annual pre-family dinner gather-round-the-TV NFL telecast, CBS made sure to include a promo for “Two and a Half Men” that included child actor Angus T. Jones shouting an unprintable street crudity for oral sex. Gotcha!

It was wrong and unnecessary to include in the script, wrong and unnecessary to include in a promo. And that’s exactly why it was in the script and exactly why it was selected to be a promo — shown on Thanksgiving afternoon during a football telecast.

And every commercial network’s promo department now works off a copy of that same pathetic plan.

***

What Goes Around, Comes Around, Part II:

When we look at the issues that spawned the American Revolution, nearly 250 years ago, we’ll see that the Colonies could no longer abide the mandates from England that forced its citizens to serve the kingdom of George III.

It’s hardly a coincidence, then, that this nation’s founders saw fit to include among our inalienable rights a free press, one that was not servile at the feet of a monarchy or any government.

News, then, was limited to print. But that freedom was adopted by radio and then television shortly after their arrival as newsgathering and news-carrying media.

Nearly 250 years later, the news media, in the form of radio and TV, have a new kingdom they’re forced to serve. They must serve their corporate crowns, they must exploit and bastardize the news while abandoning the public’s trust to serve the financial interests of the network Fatherland.

And that’s why what we used to recognize and appreciate and rely upon as genuine local and national news broadcasts have increasingly become advertisements for the primetime goods being sold by the bosses.

In New York, Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 and 11 are no different than pre-Revolutionary War colonies, reduced to serfdom working to enrich their corporate kingdoms. Instead of shipping tobacco and cotton and dyes back to England, their newscasts pimp and prostitute the news to deliver viewers to “American Idol,” “The Biggest Loser,” “Survivor” and on and on.

Two recent WABC Ch. 7 Eyewitness News broadcasts were loaded with a breathless, breaking news exclusive, including a report from an on-the-spot correspondent: ABC had announced the pairings for its latest season of “Dancing With the Stars.”

The King was pleased.

Otherwise, it’s “Off with their heads!”

The news as delivered by TV, news as we once knew it and valued it and cherished it — and fought and died for it — has been reduced and returned to its George III state.

From New York City, the capital of the Free World, there no longer remains even one legitimate evening or nightly TV newscast. Nothing even close. And if that doesn’t disturb you, even frighten you, it should.