The demon spawn that manage the only half-dozen news outlets left in this world are at it again and this time believe it or not their prey is Don Imus?! Yeah, that Don Imus... the radio talk show host who looks like he died sometime back in 1983 and managed to remain on the air for two decades during his decomposition. Why all the fervor?
Ok, it seems Imus made an off color remark (pardon the pun), about a bunch of Rutgers University Womens Basketball players by referring to them as "Nappy Headed Hos" and apparently that's all it takes to become the number one news story on every continent. Perhaps if someone said "Iraq is full of nappy headed Hos without body armor" the media would wake up and start reporting on something significant instead... even if by accident!
Besides all that, who thought Don Imus was still relevant enough to use the term "Ho"? Hell, when he was chasing skirts women were referred to as wenches and the sport of basketball had not yet been invented. Sure, his remark was ill conceived but the guy hosts a comedy show on the radio that has been doing this kind of humor for literally forty years.
Nobody seriously pushed to have him fired during a career that served up the same swill for four decades and now suddenly his throw-away line about a bunch of tall collegian women is the thing most on the mind of the media? Oops, I called them "tall collegian women" - does that mean Jessie Jackson is going to start a letter writing campaign to silence me as well?
When I was in college if someone called me a "straight haired slut" on the radio I'd have laughed or called up and replied. The Rutgers team and coaches agreed to meet with Imus to discuss his comment and one would have thought that this was something that could and should have been resolved by the offensive and offended parties.
Instead, the media blabbered on and on about this non-saga as it entered its 3rd, 5th or 8th week while blow-hards ranging from the Rev. Al Sharpton to Keith Olberman to Tim Russert continued to ratchet up the faux intensity on the brittle shock jock until both CBS and MSNBC buckled by firing Imus.
Meanwhile anyone with a brain in their head is out shopping for batteries - fearing that their TiVO remote will be out of juice when they desperately need it to fast-forward past these idiotic "news" segments.
Another tempest in a thimble gets the full attention of every major news network while the important things going on in the world are glossed over with the casual malaise of an Arizona teenager applying her ChapStick.
I really can't wait for the "News" to move along and get stuck on something else instead....
Proving that the retardation of the media is not limited solely to the shores of the United States, this entry in our Least Newsworthy Story of The Year contest comes to us straight from jolly old England. It seems 24 year old Prince William and 25 year old Kate Middleton decided to part ways during tearful heart-to-heart talks in the Alps.
Of course it must be rough for a man born into royalty to have to go through a breakup with one of his twenty year old girlfriends. Here is a young, reasonably handsome man who by sole reason of birthright gets to walk around calling himself a Prince and living off the taxpayers of the British Realm.
I am sure the utter hardship of his life during this crisis of the heart is simply unbearable. It may take as much as a phone call or as long as a few minutes for him to have new girls offering themselves to him en masse. In fairness, if you are in fact Prince William it makes perfect sense that this kind of information would be considered news... to you.
The same can be said for Ms. Middleton as well. It might even be relevant if you personally knew either of the unhappy couple. However, for the several billion "other people" on planet Earth... why would it make even the tiniest bit of difference that these two do-nothings split up?
This story has been running for three entire days so far and is the cover story on most of the major newspapers in London today. It also has been the lead story on BBC news casts (so much for the BBC being one of the last bastions of hope within the decaying corpse that is today's media). On the first day of rampant coverage the BBC in fact put this story first and followed it up with that minor tidbit about dead UK soldiers which got all of thirty seconds of coverage.
The Sun has gotten so far afield of reporting actual news that they have decided to make this non-story their cover's central focus for three days in a row (so far). They must hope this 24 year old boy goes out on a pub crawl to drown his sorrows in his beer... Ooo that would make such a great front page picture wouldn't it?
A heinous act of tragic proportions took place last week on the campus of Virginia Tech. Yes, we all understand that. It should have been reported on quickly and completely. Instead the media decided to report on it quickly and with an eye toward the prurient interest in evil that they think sells newspapers and television advertisements.
For every one or two news stories about the facts of what happened there have been a dozen or more ghoulish attempts to retrace the steps of the scumbag who did these acts. The media made sure we all knew the gunman's ethnicity, name, appearance... hell they even went out of their way to tell us his grade point average. Why give this lunatic the publicity he obviously was after and why embolden other maniacs with similar delusions? I will not publish his name, a single fact about him or link to any story including information about the life and times of this dirtbag.
When professional sports stopped showing video of idiots who ran out onto the field of play during a televised event (to get some face time in the media), the number of people choosing to step over the railings and out onto the turf dropped dramatically. Hasn't any responsible party in the media made the logical inference that reporting on the life and favorite ice cream flavors of a lone gunmen breeds more attention seeking lone gunman?
Meanwhile the one person in this entire story who truly distinguished himself was Liviu Librescu. Ahh yes, if you are like most people you haven't the slightest idea who this great man was. You also have no idea what he did during a defining moment in the lives (or deaths) of dozens of teenage collegians who may go on to do great things one day in part because he selflessly allowed them to.
Professor Librescu survived the holocaust in Romania living in a ghetto while his father was held captive in one of the camps. He was persecuted by anti-semitic regimes in his home country until he finally was able to emigrate to Israel. Eventually he gained enough prominence as an engineering professor to become world renowned for his work and moved his family to the United States where he took on a teaching position at a prominent university.
Last week he was shot five times and killed by the scumbag gunman at Virginia Tech while holding the door of his classroom shut so his students could flee through the nearby window to safety. In a world where athletes and rockstars are given hero status it is rare to find a real hero... one who should have gotten a lot more appreciation than he has thus far.
Instead, the "News" decided to get stuck on the gunman and made the celebrity of this tragedy the lunatic who caused it.
