Yesterday, Imus was interviewing George Carlin on MSNBC. Joking about some future catastrophe, George Carlin said he expected to wake up some morning and see it on CNN. He could’ve said that he would expect to see it on MSNBC, especially since he was appearing on MSNBC, but he said he would expect to see it on CNN because CNN is the dominant brand in his mind.

Today, I received a joke by e-mail which referred to a journalist investigating a news report, however the joke didn’t just state that a journalist was investigating this report. It stated that the journalist was from CNN. What was the point of stating that the journalist was a CNN journalist? There wasn’t any, except for the possibility of the joke writer intending to elevate the status of the journalist, indicating a more serious matter that was being investigated. Whatever the reason was, or even if there was no reason, CNN was only mentioned because it is the dominant brand in the joke writer’s mind.