Shows and tells

MSNBC: Imus, Scarboring, and the two saving (not Nancy) graces Alison Stewart and Keith Olbermann.

CNN: Anderson Cooper, Larry King, and Christiane Amanpour. (Meh at this point.)

Fox News Channel: The coach who snapped you with towels, the cheerleaders he watched through a peephole, and the closeted gay men who want careers.

You know who really deserve to run cable channels? Three men: Bill Maher, Morgan Spurlock and Penn Jilette.

A half hour to an hour of HBO's "Real Time," FX's "30 Days," or Showtime's Bulls, hit!" contain more truth and urban legend debunking than an entire year of Dateline, a decade of Fox News, and most any commercial network broadcast that bills itself as news. I've just started watching the (seemingly short) 6 episode first season DVD of "30 Days" (which considering the hundreds of hours of footage for every show that Spurlock and R.J. Cutler's editors have to hack down to fill 44 minutes is reasonable.)

Already, I have two people who need to see two of these shows. One a political biggie I know and the other a younger family relation.

Maher, Jilette, and Spurlock will willingly admit their biases but they are truly fair (if not more than necessary) with their subjects and are willing to let both sides of any matter actually speak. (As opposed to giving your side and pretending to explain what the other side allegedly believes. And while they are all comedians, as another monologist Rick Reynolds notes, "only the truth is funny."