Donny Deutsch guest hosted for Piers Morgan last night on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight for your basic run-of-the-mill primetime cable news show. There are few more loathesome things on television than primetime cable news, except for possibly Toddlers & Tiaras and First Take. In fact, primetime cable news is pretty much everything terrible about everything on television in hour long packages with different people screaming over the top of ine another and insulting one another.
NBC Sports college basketball analyst and former Orlando Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy made an appearance on Piers Morgan Tonight last night as a panelist. The topic wasn't the Los Angeles Lakers, nor the upcoming NBA All-Star Game, nor the debate over the college basketball product.
No, the panel didn't discuss sports at all.
CNN has three clips posted online featuring SVG's and the panel's thoughts on Osama Bin Laden's killing, Rihanna and Chris Brown's relationship, and obesity in America (where SVG touches on the topic respectfully as possible in spite of the horribly judgmental woman across from him).
That's right, Stan Van Gundy was invited onto CNN last night to talk about obesity in America and what should and shouldn't be leaked from the Osama Bin Laden raid. The funny thing is that Stan Van Gundy was actually the most tolerable person on that entire program by a country mile. He spoke calmly and intelligently and in what must have been a shock to cable news viewers, actually let other people speak. He has to be forgiven for mixing up Chris Brown and Bobby Brown too because, let's remember, he's a basketball coach/analyst, not an employee of E.
What does it say about CNN though that they're randomly inviting basketball analysts on to talk about political and cultural stories? That's not a knock at SVG by any stretch, but has anybody for one second ever watched a political talk show and thought to themselves, "I really am dying to know what Flip Saunders thinks about that North Korean nuclear test." Or perhaps even yearned for Eric Karros' take on the State of the Union address? Or Darrell Waltrip to break down the significance of drone strikes. Has CNN completely run out of ideas and left themselves to the Wikipedia featured article of the day to book their guests?
It'd be interesting to see ESPN use this strategy on one of their thousands of debate shows. I'd love to see Hugh Douglas debate Pat Buchanan on who's the best team in college basketball.
