The Big Story
Arafat is dead. But then you knew that. He was a bad guy. But you knew that too. He had won the Nobel Peace Prize. If you didn't know that, you do by now. They led with that credential when CBS broke into CSI: New York with the big news.
I've finally gotten over my old reaction to the announcement of all such "Special Reports." I used to assume that the president had been shot. Now, even though the world is full of surprises and surprisingly bad news, I don't expect much when "We interrupt this program." It's just part of the war with 24/7 cable and as likely to be trivial, or in this case expected, as important or surprising. Arafat's death could have waited a few minutes until the end of the show. If I want news as it happens, I watch cable or surf the Web. In fact, I wasn't even watching CSI: NY live, but on Tivo with a 45-minute delay.
At any rate, I missed the end of CSI: New York. So why did the guy kill all those people? The CSI guy, I mean, not Arafat.
UPDATE: CBS is apologizing: "An overly aggressive CBS News producer jumped the gun with a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news. We sincerely regret the error. The episode of CSI: NEW YORK will be rebroadcast Friday, Nov. 12." (Via Drudge.)