Pearl Harbor Day and Afterward

64 years ago, a day in infamy. The memorial’s not exactly in the greatest of conditions either.

“Nightline” – it really feels schizophrenic:

12/7/05 edition started with Cynthia McFadden covering the terror story (the air marshals shooting the unfortunate passenger, who turned out to be mentally unstable and not a terrorist).

And, then, Martin Bashir does a story on Narnia (the so-called debate about whether C.S. Lewis meant for the Narnia series to convert unsuspecting people to Christianity – umm, come on, I don’t think he was that kind of Christian; Lewis’ own stepson felt that Lewis was not trying to create a good Christian story but thinking that Christians should write good stories), which really could easily be its own episode entirely (Lewis was a complex man, as any man could be).

Indeed, it was jarring to go from Big News Story of the Day to the more human interest stuff so suddenly. A little segue would have helped, but there wasn’t enough time for it (they have to be done in 30 minutes, after all).

And, Bashir closed the night with a look at the Red Cross’ new logo – the Red Crystal, now that the Israeli sister organization and Palestinian sister organization recognize each other (a compromise logo, so that no one has to feel offended by the cross or the crescent or whatnot), creating one Red Something (sorry, Crystal, which looked more like a Diamond, really). That would have been a nice ending, but I felt so awkward about the different tone Bashir brought as compared to what McFadden had (she had an urgent tone, which got too chatty when she interviewed a plane passenger from today’s incident).

It’s just nuts. I want to like Nightline, but when you start the night with one person and end it with someone else – it’s just weird. I preferred it when Nightline used to stick with one voice – whether it was Chris Bury or Michelle Martin or John Donvan sitting in for Ted Koppell or just plain old Ted – it was one voice for the one half hour. Or, if you’re going to have multiple anchors, make them sit next to each other (as tradition would have it), or have the person who opened the night end it.