Take away their gadgets

On CNN now, Anderson Cooper is talking to a hologram of will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. A. HOLOGRAM. OF. A. RAPPER. This man is not a Sith, giving unholy orders to be carried out by his minions. A regular satellite linkup would have worked just fine. I think some overzealous IT guys got sold on the deluxe packages from the graphics companies. Every network has a tarted up, whorish menagerie of pop up graphics, 3-D displays their anchors walk around, and virtual rooms where they analyze graphs. I don't have to see Chuck Todd walk around a deserted Colosseum, dodging spring loaded exit polls about the voting breakdown of white suburbanites and digital tigers representing people who wanted change, just to he can pull the magic lever that spins a map of Virginia out of a black hole, where he tells us things aren't looking good for John McCain.

Keep it simple. Regular graphics will do. No one is watching this at an IMAX with 3-D glasses. John King doesn't need to look like he fell out of Minority Report, with floating touch screens and exaggerated hand movements holding the key to zoom ins and video pauses, to give me the straight dope on Al Franken's senate run. Dial it back a notch.