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"[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race/2012/03/07/CNN.jpg)\n\n CNN is one of the most confounding news outlets on the planet. Going solely from their name and description, you expect them to provide news. Almost as a rule, they do not. And then, when you settle down for six straight hours of Republican Primary coverage, anticipating a glorious clusterfuck of uninformative hapless stagecraft, they taunt you with vague competency.\n\nThe network is like the helicopter mom of American news. On any given day, they over-plan and over-schedule nothing much at all, leaving you to wonder why you don\u2019t do the adult equivalent of going out in the backyard and throwing dirt clods at the wall to watch them explode. But sometimes, as was the case last night, that helicopter-mom sensibility rises to the occasion. Instead of a uselessly overmanaged Tuesday, viewers got to see her nearly effortlessly coordinating a birthday party for a bunch of eight-year-olds\u2014or its political news analog, at any rate.\n\nDespite having far too many personalities in the room, CNN\u2019s personnel traded airtime respectfully and mostly seamlessly. Although every single panel member\u2014Donna Brazile, Ari Fleischer, Alex Castellanos and Paul Begala\u2014failed to suppress a wincing expression whenever Gloria Borger started saying goddamn near anything about who knows what, the rest were in good form. Fleischer was especially inoffensive, responding to Begala\u2019s reasonable assessment that maybe Mitt Romney &amp;quot;just isn\u2019t very good at this&amp;quot; with practical remarks about how (commercial money aside) Romney is running the most comprehensive on-the-ground national campaign and avoiding unforced errors involving delegates and ballot registration.\n\nStill, without errors, it wouldn\u2019t have been CNN. In fact, last night wouldn\u2019t even have been real. Without something really silly happening, you\u2019d have watched it with a knife poised over your belly, saying, &amp;quot;I have to wake up. You can\u2019t kill yourself in a dream.&amp;quot;\n\nLet\u2019s take a look:\n\n &amp;quot;SUPER TUESDAY IS SPONSORED BY COAL.&amp;quot;\n\n Although CNN\u2019s night essentially kicked off at 7:00 pm, the real fireworks came at about 7:50, when many states were about to post significant results. To give the moment a sense of occasion, CNN ran a minute-long preview, narrated by some off-brand &amp;quot;action-movie preview narrator.&amp;quot; This is a transcript:\n\nWILL THIS NIGHT BRING ANY CLARITY TO THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE PRESIDENTIAL RACE IN MEMORY?!\n\n [Santorum clip.]\n\n POLLS ARE ABOUT TO CLOSE IN MASSACHUSETTS, TENNESSEE AND OKLAHOMA. IT\u2019S AMERICA\u2019S CHOICE, AND IT\u2019S SUPER TUESDAY!\n\n [Pause.]\n\n MITT ROMNEY IS COUNTING ON A WIN IN HIS HOME STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS!\n\n [Romney clip.]\n\n BUT IN THE SOUTH AND WEST HE MAY BE VULNERABLE TO RICK SANTORUM\u2019S ONE-TWO PUNCH!\n\n [Pause.]\n\n THE ROMNEY-SANTORUM SHOWDOWN IS INTENSE, EVEN AS THIS NIGHT WEARS ON. WILL ANY ONE CANDIDATE EMERGE AS THE BIG SUPER TUESDAY WINNER OR LOSER?!\n\n [Pause.]\n\n REPUBLICANS ARE CHOOSING. THE WORLD IS WATCHING. AND NOTHING IN THIS ELECTION COMPARES TO WHAT\u2019S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!\n\nThen the screen revealed a giant SUPER TUESDAY chyron. It was a miracle it didn\u2019t catch fire and start playing a riff by RATT or the LA Guns.\n\n Speaking of hair metal: as the results come in and Anderson Cooper throws it to different people in the studio, CNN plays a background loop of a guitar riff that is probably named something like &amp;quot;Don\u2019t Stop the Presses&amp;quot; but should be named &amp;quot;Dun-Dun Dunnn... Grunnnnnge.&amp;quot; It\u2019s effective during urgent moments, but the producers also play it as bumper music every time they go to commercial, which makes you hate everything about it within an hour. There\u2019s no perfect formula with music in news programs; it often seems as inappropriate as the rock songs conservatives choose for their rally music. (As David Thorpe noted in the Boston Phoenix Everyone would be happier if some intern cued up pleasantly jangly Time-Warner-owned indie-pop on the way to commercial instead of &amp;quot;Dun-Dun Dunnn... Grunnnnnge,&amp;quot; but that will never happen, because ours is an unmerciful God.\n\n Ron Paul\u2019s head on the CNN ELECTION CENTER screen is larger than the top third of Wolf Blitzer.\n\n It\u2019s not yet 9:00 pm, but if you have been taking a drink every time Wolf Blitzer says some variation of &amp;quot;we are watching this very closely,&amp;quot; you are already drunk.\n\n CNN has arranged an exclusive look at Ohio\u2019s Hamilton County returns, with Dana Bash on location with the Supervisor of Elections. It turns out that this exclusive look is the cameraman crouching down and filming the Hamilton County Supervisor of Elections\u2019 computer. I paused the screen, took an iPhone photo of CNN taking video of the computer, tweeted it, then reblogged the Tumblr post about my tweet and then forwarded an email link about it to the guy who writes the blog A Thousand Plateaus of Stupid Crap.\n\n An interview with Sarah Palin from Alaska is apparently being beamed in on the Zenith my dad inherited from my dead grandfather in 1980. If Palin had taken off her glasses and announced that John Lennon had just been shot, everyone watching would have understood.\n\n There\u2019s not a lot of originality in the throws back and forth. For instance:\n\nBLITZER: Dana, tell our viewers what\u2019s going on over there, \u2019cause this race is really tight. Santorum slightly ahead.\n\n BASH: This race is really tight. He\u2019s slightly ahead on the state level....\n\n(&amp;quot;We don\u2019t need to see his identification, Dana.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You don\u2019t need to see his identification, Wolf.&amp;quot;)\n\n It\u2019s been escalating so steadily all broadcast that I didn\u2019t notice, but Wolf Blitzer is basically screaming now. We come back from commercial to: &amp;quot;BECAUSE YOU\u2019RE A CNN VIEWER YOU KNOW THAT MITT ROMNEY IS AHEAD IN OHIO.&amp;quot; WE ARE A MAJOR NETWORK! WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! THIS IS PHIL RIZZUTO FOR THE MONEY STORE!\n\n Tom Foreman takes us on a virtual convention tour of the delegates in Tampa. This is like playing SimConvention, and the CGI could have been done for an undergrad thesis in the late 1990s. Flags appear above SimConvention Goers as they SimVote for Romney or Gingrich or Paul. This shows or tells nothing other than that people can sit in orderly rows in Tampa and have flags appear above them in blocky, awkward ways. Regarding who will be the final nominee, Foreman says, &amp;quot;So far we still don\u2019t actually have an answer.&amp;quot; This is the antithesis of information. If you threw this segment onto a clump of informational matter, they would both explode.\n\n I\u2019m not sure who is shouting it, but someone just shouted, &amp;quot;THE TACO BELL ARENA AT BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY.&amp;quot;\n\n Finally, at 11:14 Anderson Cooper does the walk to THE CNN CUBE to get election numbers from THE CUBE DWELLER. There are no numbers. They could be here for hours. This time Cooper does not have to walk back from THE CUBE on camera. I assume he is playing &amp;quot;Seven Minutes in Heaven&amp;quot; in THE CUBE, and I\u2019m going to Taco Bell. A quadrennial event this moving deserves FourthMeal.\n\nMobutu is the founder of Et tu, Mr. Destructo? and writes the &amp;quot;America\u2019s Screaming Conscience&amp;quot; column at Gawker. He has also written for Vice, Deadspin and The Classical. Click here to follow him on Twitter.\n\nRead more from Death Race 2012.\n\n&amp;quot;Super Tuesday in Romney World: &amp;quot;It\u2019s like Groundhog Day. Six More Weeks of Santorum&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;The Kindergarten Campaign: Everyone Gets a Gold Star&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;Sound Familiar? Now Romney Has The Rustbelt Problem&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;What It Takes (To Get the Non-Romneys To Drop Out of the Race)&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;All Aboard The Ladies for Santorum Bus Tour!&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;Will Mitt Get Bible-Belted Down South? Walter Kirn on Romney\u2019s Mormonism&amp;quot;\n\nFollow Mobutu on Twitter."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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