'Crossing the Bar'

I have been watching a train wreck and its name is Larry Seidlin.

After a blog post and a lot of mutterings under my breath about the insanity of cable news coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, I confess I watched the hearing to determine possession of her rapidly decomposing remains.

Larry Seidlin is the Broward County, Fla., judge – the ringmaster of this circus – who made that determination.

When one attorney used that term, calling the proceedings “a circus,” the judge went ballistic. But, circus it was, complete with video of Anna Nicole in clown makeup.

It’s not every day you see an attorney falling out of a chair, the people around him saying he passed out, he explaining he tripped, and the judge, determining he’s diabetic, yelling, “Here’s my credit card. Go get him some orange juice.”

A news junkie like me would have been hard-pressed to find anything else on cable with Fox News and MSNBC covering the hearing almost continuously, and CNN taking a break occasionally to slip in some real news.

I did have the presence of mind to switch to Court TV coverage, thereby avoiding the daily dose of dirt on Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.

It’s a given: cable news is going to hell in a handbasket, and as painful as that is for a journalist, I could not tear myself away from the freak show. Thank goodness, for Internet news!

Having a degree in political science (in addition to journalism) and more than a few law courses behind me, I confess the fascination was a courtroom situation run amok – counter to anything I’ve ever learned about law.

But, hey, I had a similar reaction to a Supreme Court decision in the year 2000! Well, me, and a whole host of legal lights.

Don’t know if any readers watched this surreal sideshow, but I believe all witnesses and attorneys who suffered Seidlin’s labyrinth of lunacy should be put on “suicide watch.”

Larry Seidlin is mad, and there’s not even method in his madness, not to mention legal decorum.

Which, of course, makes him eligible for his own TV show.

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The paternity hearing to determine the daddy of little Danilynn – the billion-dollar baby - begins today. DNA should make this one a no-brainer, which pretty much sums up the last one.