Okay, here’s a question I know is trivial and superficial but that I’m going to throw out there anyway because there’s a point at the end and also because we’re in ElectionLimboLand and also because it’s Friday: Ever noticed how MSNBC’s on-air personalities have really good skin? In a too-good-to-be-true, even-for-TV, lit-from-within-with-the-glow-of-a-thousand-suns kind of way? I’ll admit it: I have. Watching, as I do, many too many hours of the network’s news coverage each day–and being exposed, therefore, to repetitive loops of information about Sarah Palin’s wardrobe and the latest Casey Anthony development and the like–I sometimes find myself distracted. Which, in turn, quite often leads me to wonder at the provenance of the purity-of-complexion on the faces of those who are trying to keep my attention. Sure, I think to myself, it’s probably just a combination of good lighting and layers of pancake makeup, the traditional television tag-team; or maybe, I venture in wilder moments, Keith Olbermann, in a fit of RLS-triggered insomnia, has fallen prey to the late-night infomercialistic charms of Alyssa Milano and Jessica Simpson and other advocates of Guthy-Renker’s Proactiv Solution.
But it’s always speculation. There’s never an answer. Nor does my distraction ever last long enough to make me care to find one.
Until, that is, today. Because I just learned that the nagging mystery will (probably) soon be solved. Finally, we’ll (probably) discover whether Chris Matthews’s pores really are as freakishly small as they appear on Hardball, or whether his complexion is, in fact, man-made. Because, this spring, MSNBC will be going high-def.
Pore Chris.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.