But What Does That Make Them Experts Of?

If you take a look to the left sidebar you will notice that I have some favourite internet personalities – namely Wing Chun and Sars – and I visit their sites often (and I think you should too.) Yesterday I got a look at their Tara vs. Sarah column on MSNBC, where they banter back and forth about the latest celebrity. Funny, cute, classic stuff that I seem to have a never-ending appetite for. I love these two writers. So after reading the most current article on Jennifer Garner, I decided to wade through the archives to look at the older ones.

But here’s what I notice: at the end of each article, Sarah and Tara are credited thusly “Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting are co-creators and co-editors of Television Without Pity”. Television, folks. Television. These two are credited as being television experts. (Which, there is no doubt about it, they are.)

Now let’s take a look at their subjects from the archives:

Steven Soderbergh
Chick Flicks
Ben Affleck
Reese Witherspoon
Matt Damon
Jude Law
Johnny Depp
Gwyneth Paltrow
M. Night Shyamalan
Ben Stiller

With the exception of the current article on Jennifer Garner, there’s nary a TV star in the bunch. Okay, okay, Damon had a guest-appearance on an episode of Will & Grace, Stiller did have a TV show of his own at one point, and we all know and love Johnny Depp from his Jump Street days. Regardless, overall Sarah and Tara are not debating their merits as television stars, they’re talking about the movies. Movies, not television. And that’s a completely different medium! It’s like having an expert in clay sculptor give their opinion of water-colours. Or it’s like having Jon Stewart go on Crossfire just to send that dick Tucker Carlson sailing through the uprights. (Okay, bad example to prove my point, but good example for how it can be done properly.)

I don’t doubt that these two are movie experts or pop culture experts in addition to being television experts. In fact, if you take a look at good old Fametracker (again, see left,) you’ll find that Tara is the co-creator of that site, which is specifically about the trappings of fame in all its forms. So clearly, they are definitely qualified to be doing what they are doing. I just don’t think crediting them with Television Without Pity is the tagline they should be going with for these MSNBC columns. Why not give the shout-out to Fametracker, which is the smaller site probably needing the exposure more, and which has far more to do with what they are talking about anyway? Just something they might want to consider.