Crossfire was an awful show that featured an ideological hack from the political right arguing with an ideological hack from the political left. It aired from 1982 to 2006, and was canceled in large part because Jon Stewart showed up one day and mercifully put a bullet in its brain. But now — and, for the record, I blame popular television shows like The Walking Dead for glorifying undead monsters here — it is back. And it will star Newt Gingrich. And when you read what CNN president Jeff Zucker had to say about the decision, you are going to scream.
The revival of the right-left debate show is part of the ratings-starved network’s ongoing reshuffling led by Jeff Zucker, the new president of CNN. In a statement, Zucker said that “[f]ew programs in the history of CNN have had the kind of impact on political discourse that Crossfire did.”
Yo. That is not a good thing. The state of political discourse in this country is garbage. Double garbage, even. So are all of our cable news networks. And manufactured yappy blowhard argument shows like Crossfire were a big part of making those things happen. Bringing it back now is kind of like starting a tire fire in a playground because you liked listening to people argue about how to put out the last playground tire fire. That analogy doesn’t even work, really, but I’m so angry about this decision that I can’t think of a better one right now and “tire fire in a playground” seemed appropriate. Whatever. I stand by it.