POSTED JANUARY 22, 1998--New York Times columnist Frank Rich never really seems to get the credit he deserves. Maybe it all goes back to his days as the Times' chief theater critic, when he was known as "the Butcher of Broadway"  and widely reviled for his excoriation of the drek that has come to dominate the American stage. But as a general interest columnist Rich has proven himself to be an astute, independent-minded observer of the popular scene.

We were reminded of this recently when Rich identified and defined a disturbing new sensibility which seems to be evidencing itself more and more in the news media these days: Emotional Correctness. Political Correctness, Rich wrote, has been supplanted by Emotional Correctness, or E.C. for short. For both consumers of news and reporters themselves, E. C. mandates that we mist up in sentimental approval at, say, the announcement that some tired looking, fertility drug swilling Iowan has produced a litter of seven children. In the new E.C. media culture, only a sourpuss or a zealot could deem the mighty birthing grotesque or, worse yet, unimportant.

Of course, examples of this new value are especially obvious in television news (very high E.C. Quotient), although newspapers and magazines are hardly immune.

And so it is that we at Cursor have decided it is time to institute a Twin Cities E.C. Watch. So when your favorite local news anchor appears on the screen and tells you how deeply disturbing he finds, say, the theft of the Baby Jesus from some nativity scene in Coon Rapids, we want to hear about it.                                                                                                     - M. Mosedale   

Click to read Frank Rich's NY Times column on emotional correctness. Only available here, a Cursor WEBXCLUSIVE