The State of the News
April 18th, 2007 by Dusty
Looks like 32 people died in a big mess of bullets that sort of makes your guts cry if you think about it too long. 33 people if you count the whackjob that did the shooting, but I don’t count him. Yes, I will admit that all life has value, just like we are all supposed to, but I will be completely honest and go so far as to say that some human life is more important than other human life. Now you can call me inhumane, but secretly you believe it too, even if you don’t have the stones to admit it. 53 year old crack addict dies on the street? Not terribly important to anyone, as evidenced by the number of people who will miss him/her. I’d also be willing to bet that he or she was not going to stumble upon the cure for cancer at the bottom of his or her heroin spoon. Call me nutty. Ignoring the greater epidemic of “people doing drugs until they kill themselves”, another dead junkie is just one less person who will break into my car. This also applies to Johnny mass murderer. He was not on the road to be the next nobel laureate or even build a better mousetrap. The people he took with him…I guess we’ll never know.
It seems like the media has been horny for news lately, and I wish it didn’t take something like this to pry their retarded mitts off of Anna Nicole Smith’s carcass and some crap story about the crypt keeper making rude statements about some basketball players. For the record, Anna Nicole’s death doesn’t really count as tragic, either. Can you believe the coroner determined that it was drug-related? I (and a million geniuses just like me) made that call the day she died without even having the benefit of medical training.
Great. Now I have myself all worked up and I’m going to go off on each one of these matters. First, my stance on Anna, and for that matter, anyone who counts as a bystander while the rest of us go about doing whatever small things we can to make this world better. I don’t think she was doing any real harm to society if you don’t count making America look like a douche geyser for obsessing about such things, but she’s like Paris Hilton, Britney spears, and all of the other wealthy folks who just go around doing whatever they want to. It seems we have fun watching their antics until we get bored with them or they go to rehab or whatever, but they aren’t really hurting anyone outside of those whom they directly affect – like kids, friends (in some cases), and so on. To the rest of us, they are as irrelevant as Rosie’s uterus.
So when they die or leave the scene in whatever way they do, it’s not like we lost anyone who made great strides in how to do cocaine and drink too much. These people are what I call society’s bystanders. Think of society as a big giant turd that has to be rolled around in sprinkles until it is completely covered (I’ve reached my metaphor limit for the year, so bear with me). There are the people who are helping push the turd by having jobs, running businesses, paying taxes, recycling, all of the little stuff that most of us do. I am part of that category. Sometimes I want to stop pushing the turd because I am tired, but deep down inside I know that that just means that everyone else will have to push harder, and I’ll get behind in my turdrolling and have to make up for it later. Mixed in among us are the folks who are putting their backs into it – the folks who are grunting and straining and sweating to move the turd just a little faster. Those would be people who do non-profit stuff, volunteer their weekends, work in convalescent homes, and do other things that I only wish I had the character to do.
On the other side are the people who are pushing against us, and scraping the sprinkles off of our turd – those who view welfare as a career option, criminals, drug addicts who are in and out of state funded rehab centers, and so on. They are making things a little more difficult for the rest of us because they suck.
Lastly, there are the bystanders, which is why I explored this weird analogy in the first place. The Anna Nicoles, Paris Hiltons, most of Hollywood, and the trust-fund hippies who live in my neighborhood. They don’t help push the turd because they don’t have to. Sure, they should, but I should volunteer more, too. They don’t have to help because they have fame, money or power so they sit and watch everyone else push. To me, this makes these people irrelevant. Neither helping nor hindering, but rather squandering their potential, I just don’t feel a lot of sympathy for the ones who choose to lead that life.
Yet at times I feel oddly jealous of them. Go figure.
Now the unfortunate comments of Don Imus. Luckily I’m not in the mood to make any friends, so I’ll be honest about that one as well. Every time something like this happens, it seems that anyone who is not a member of the group at which said comments were directed (in this case non-Rutgers women’s basketball players) has to over-hyperbolize the extent of their outrage. People called the comments disgusting, racist (imagine that one), repugnant, and indicative of a horribly racist society (which is plain bullshit). I personally can’t bring myself to describe it as anything more than a poor choice of words, bordering on stupid. Sorry. That’s as deep as it goes for me.
The girls on that basketball team deserve an apology for being the target of a statement like that, regardless of whether it was intended to hurt them. The nation does not need said apology, and if you do, you need something else to call important. Hearing a bunch of bystanders and talk show hosts go on about it as if it was the single worst injustice in history strikes me as disingenuous as hell. The only reason it is a big deal at all is because it was directed at a minority and everyone wants to overstate it to avoid being called a racist.
Seriously, let’s look at the number of people who deserve to be outraged about this - The total number is however many girls make up the Rutgers basketball team. * An old radio guy with an unfunny show called them a phrase that I’d bet my life he had never heard before his producer told him to say it. He’s a dipshit. The end.
*I guess the other team deserves to be pissed off too; due to this stunt, no one recalls their name or that they apparently won the game.
Seeing Sharpton and Jackson and the rest of those media whores capitalize on it does nothing but ensure that Imus has a job next week. If it is that horrible, then make him apologize to the team and anyone else who feels hurt by it (one time and one time only, to ensure minimum media coverage) and then fire him or cut his pay or burn down his house or whatever his employers and sponsors of the show determine necessary.
Damn, this is as refreshing as an early morning colonic, and I haven’t even touched on the Virginia Tech issue.
Virginia Tech – from what I understand, a Korean guy (let’s all breathe a collective sigh of relief that he was properly documented so we don’t have to hear the wailing of O’reilly and his ilk about how immigrants are all murderers) went off the deep end and pretty much killed everyone he saw in horrendous fashion. I’m not going to go into detail about how absolutely eff’d up this is, as you have heard it nonstop for two days now and I can’t possibly explain it in a way that will make it any more understandable or less horrible. I choose instead to share a few thoughts on things I have seen and heard since it happened.
Side note- Raise your hand if you heard this story breaking and immediately thought “Damn Koreans and their propensity for mass murder.” Yeah. Me neither. I was absolutely sure it was a white guy. When the depravity of a crime goes past a certain level, you can almost bet the guy going nuts is white. So much for my prejudice against my own race.
Now that the media has an honest to god story that isn’t about a big blonde crack addict or a walking racist mummy, the competition to outdo one another is in full effect. In an effort to make it about something other than one guy who needed help that he didn’t or wouldn’t get, they are exploring any avenue to cast blame on something else.
I heard mention that Cho Seung-Hui (the shooter) was a fucking weirdo by all accounts which was not shocking. Everybody knew he was a weirdo, and one of his teachers even recommended him for counseling on more than one occasion. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how weird you are), being a weirdo is not illegal so they couldn’t really do anything about it. I just can’t imagine the guilt that teacher must feel right now, even if it is unjustified guilt. So far I haven’t heard anyone come out and try to blame her for not doing more, but I think it will be a matter of time.
Then, of course, I heard the anti-gun folks saying that it was the gun’s fault. You can argue that if there was no such thing as a gun this wouldn’t have happened in the same way, but aside from that, you lose the argument. Think about how many people there are in this country and how many guns there are. Now think about how many of those people get pissed off every day. You’d think this sort of thing would happen four times a week based on that logic, but it doesn’t. Most people have whatever it is that draws the line between okay and not okay. So I don’t buy the anti-gun argument wholeheartedly.
I also refuse to blame society, video games, television, or the nature of modern parenting for this any more than I blame food for my being fat. I’m fat because I am lazy, I love beer, I work in an environment where I burn zero calories during the day, and I have not had a medical scare sufficient to change my lifestyle. It is 100% my fault, just like it is 100% Cho Seung-Hui’s fault that these people died. I’m sure if the world was perfect and none of the factors that can produce violent tendencies existed, this wouldn’t have happened, but if food didn’t exist, neither would obesity. The guy was damaged and incapable of dealing with whatever problems he had, and to try and pin the blame on anyone but the person who pulled the trigger is to diminish the severity of the whole event.
Lastly and most infuriatingly, the whole “What could they have done better” argument, which is usually followed closely by finding a way to blame President Bush. Sure, anytime something happens and people die it deserves speculating how we can keep it from happening again. That goes without saying. What really got my attention was the following statement I heard on a newscast yesterday-
“…most of the students we interviewed said that they wished they had been notified sooner of the situation.”
Really?
I think if they interviewed me I’d say that I would have liked to have known about it a week prior so I could mark my calendar to skip that day and maybe spread the word to others, you dipshit.
I never thought I’d say it, but I’m a little nostalgic for the days when the only news in town was wondering which dude knocked up the ex stripper meth head.
I hate the American media. The saddest part is that in 5 years, there will have been another 1,500 “MAJOR” news stories steamrolled across the faces of the American public, and most of them won’t remember any of it:
“Hey Johnny, remember back in 2007 when Don Imus got Anna Nicole pregnant and then some Asian kid shot them in the face?”
And what they do remember will be because some other oppotunistic dickhead decided to buy their stories and make a movie about them, and then charge us $15.00 to go see some sensationalized version of a story that we already know the ending to!!
Have I mentioned how much I hate the media?
Dusty — Dead on and very well written.
Jim
I agree with all of it.
The Media and Politicians and the Self-Appointed Spokesmens of Minorities and Corporate Religion…they are all chancre-ridden whores.
And I agree with Ferris…but it’s the mainstream media that sucks. There’s still some somewhat balanced sources out there. I think the change to runny-beer-shits media came to us when 24/7 news coverage was invented.
I couldn’t say it any better than that. So I’ll say nothing else except … ditto.
Well done, my dear.
Yup, What you said………
You hit every nail on the head Dusty, your parents should be proud….
I beg to differ that Paris Hilton doesn’t harm children.
If I see one more 7 year old in a skirt that’s smaller than a bar napkin say “That’s hot”, I’m crackin’ skulls.
Right on, Dusty.
If guns cause crime, does that mean vaginas cause prostitution?
Look Dusty, I have heard enough $hit about it…I did indeed know she use to be a stripper but I had no idea about all the meth! You would have done the SAME thing if you hadn’t already puked all of your Boone’s farm on her and pissed her off to the point where she fell into my arms…and practically threw herself on me!
Dusty,
Next time you are in Sapporo, Japan, let’s have some beers.
Way to keep the Turd rolling. Not one little seed fell off. Great analogy … Cheers!
I love all of your writing.
You’re pretty cool.
In fact, my friend introduced me to you, and she is now one of my best friends.
We bonded over you.
lol
As for the actual subject at hand;
Anna Nicole was… not a genius.
And not a significant person in society.
That guy who shot up all those people, I don’t know much about. But I do know that alot of people at work today [I work in a bar, they’re all drunks] were talking about it. And it was kind of stupid, because ther knew no more about it than I did. So, maybe they should just stop talking.
And lastly, the guy on the radio, he was wrong in what he said; but it doesn’t need all the coverage it’s getting.
They’re all being made into heros, when really none of them were anything important until they died, or, in radioguy’s case, did something stupid.
Well, I guess they all did something stupid.
Ok, I’ve rambled long enough.
Love your stuff!
[WRITE MORE]
So I love to read your take on things as I live in Italy and really don’t have 900 channels running all the same news items. VT got some coverage but oddly enough the Italians latched on to the Anna story like the Pope himself was involved.
You are hilarious.
I heard about the Va Tech shooting while at a training class with a guy who has family there. It was tense for a while as he got in touch with everyone.
Then, and I’m not 100% proud of this, it hit me that if the shooting has happened 7-10 days earlier, Imus would still have a job and my mornings would not be so damn boring.
It’s not about the news any more, it’s about which story can be reported on the fastest. Nothing like seeing Geraldo talking to the University President at 6:45AM the day after asking “Do you wish this hadn’t happened?”
Why can’t we be rolling a donut? Donuts are way better than turds.
Also, this is me in agreement.
HALLELUJAH!!!
PRAISE THE LORD!!!
Wow, that was some intense shit, Man! I KNOW I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think you did a damn good job speaking for all of us.
You truly are my hero, Dusty.
Dusty:
Thank you for sharing your views. Even when I disagree with you, I appreciate very much the fact that you’ve thought about what you say, and have reasons for why you say it. I don’t see any of the knee-jerk hollerings from you that come from so many others.
I hope you don’t get famous enough that when you say things that need saying you will be morally shot at by those who are not helping push the turd.
I hope you have an idea that there are a lot of people who think, like you do, and reason, like you do, and appreciate hearing what you have to say about your thoughts.
Thank you again.
Dusty,
Ditto on what Jim Cook wrote. Thanks for putting into words the shit that rolls around in our heads.
Anna Nicole…..not newsworthy
Brittney Spears shaving her head…..not news
Don Imus verbal diarrhea….not newswothy
Who got kicked off American Idol…not news
Keep up the good work
Yes, anytime a story breaks that I just KNOW the media will stand in a circle and jerk off onto, I enact a 72 hour media emargo? This not only keeps me sane, but it also saves me money as I avoid taking golf club to my T.V. Truth is, I can’t take the smarmy faux concern of anchors and the “ain’t this the worst?” montage music.
Anna Nicole died? Yeah, I heard something about that. Imus said something stupid? Hmm. Shocking. 33 innocent people shot? Truly tragic.
Unfortunately, i didn’t get out of the Virginia Tech tragedy media blitz unscathed. Only two hours after the shootings took place, the local news was ALREADY running thier story asking “Can it happen HERE? Are we PREPARED?” I went hunting for my golf club.
i was going to plagarize (as it seems to run in my family) but then i decided that i had told too many people about your writing and they would possibly call me on it. not wanting to deal with all those lies and the subsequent drama i think i will just post a link to these oh-so-true words. that is if it is ok with you.
Good stuff, once again. Yay for Dusty. This is where I come for a good shot of logic, objectivity, and an analogy or 50. You should write more. Piss on whatever else you have going on in your life. I’m very self-centered. The heart wants what it wants. And I’m done with ya.
I couldn’t agree more. I am thankful and proud that I was born and raised in this country, but I am also embarrassed of our media and what we as Americans consider news, sometimes.
Brad and Angelina aren’t getting along?! Quick! Call CNN!
Well written, Dusty.
Douche geyser = awesome.
Speaking of douche geysers, can we skip to the part where we blame Pres Bush for everything? C’mon. You know that’s the fun part.
Didn’t you know, Dusty? In America, people are entitled to everything they want simply because they were born here…worse, the ones that weren’t born here or shouldn’t legally be here…are entitled to more than those people rolling the turd (fabulous analogy, incidentally). I love paying for illegal aliens to have cable television and free rent…makes me feel really spiritual everytime I see my paystubs. Also, everything is always someone elses fault (and responsibility to mitigate/compensate). Makes me want to wretch. The overprivileged (bystanders) can all bite me…I almost care about their politcal views, too. Amazing how people immediately assign value to every braindead thing that comes out of their mouths just because they are celebrities. I’m done bitching…for now
Well Dusty, there’s not much that I can say to that, other than BRAVO!!
Only thing that bothered me with the whole VA Tech thing is that the SWAT team waited to break in until seconds after he shot himself. Does this not seem circumspect to anyone but me? I’m left to wonder what exactly the cops were thinking when they took so long to respond. They could have killed him anytime before that, but they didn’t because the door was chained shut… CHAINED SHUT!! How the hell is it that no one could knock that door down?? They have CARS… CARS!!! They could have ran into the building with a car, and then fled in behind it, guns blazing(metaphorically speaking, of course). I think it’s just ridiculous that they stood around for so long.
If there was one thing they could have done better, it was responding with some sense of urgency to the situation.
Thus ends my rant… for now.
TLee007
I had the same thought (and I agree that some cases demand a more aggressive response), but for the most part, the people who claim we should have gone in with guns blazing are the same ones who would cry the loudest if an innocent kid was accidentally killed by a police bullet, even if it saved a dozen others. We wouldn’t have the luxury of quantifying how many were saved, only how many died.
Police procedure has been honed to great extent by litigation-happy special interest groups, and there are good points and bad points to it. This is one of the bad points.
“The only reason it is a big deal at all is because it was directed at a minority and everyone wants to overstate it to avoid being called a racist.”
True story: middle schooler is suspended and investigated for a hate crime for leaving a ham steak on a cafeteria table frequented by (Somali immigrant) muslims. Not two weeks before at the same school, another middle schooler asked the cafeteria workers if they had any non meat entrees, it was Good Friday and his religion forbade him eating meat. He was laughed at by students, teacher/monitors, and the caf workers, one of whom told him to get a life. So it’s okay to ridicule white Catholics, just don’t offend the Muslims. Frickin double standards. And why is Jesse (”Hymietown”) Jackson crabbing about Imus?
The last thing that I will ever agree with is censorship. But the next time an anchor asks the victim of a true tragedy ( anguish over Anna-Nicole’s “unremarkable anus” doesn’t count!!) “How that made them feel” to be there I say we all collectivly raise the turd and beat them about the head and shoulders with it!! Gimmie a break!! It would be great to find a way to buid a truly non-sensational, wholly objective and condierate media!! They came up with a v-chip for kids…how bout an ethics chip for anybody that goes into TV news!! The second that an anchor decides to take a story to the n-th degree it causes them to piss themselves and forget who they are for an hour.
Dusty, I’ve been an avid reader for years and I find your writing to be intelligent, entertaining and needed. Please, for all of our sakes, keep it up!
Bravo!
Just dropped in to see what your take on the latest insanity via our dipshit media was since tiring of the airheads in OTD at RCG and their equally exhausting and predictable political BS. Figures you’d lay it out in plain fricking english so that even those dimmies could understand it all.
Well done amigo on a typically refreshing point of view.
mw
Oh, yeah.
At least Smart Alec finally and unequivocally stepped dead center in his own turd. Equally fitting.
mw
ok…totally off subject, but I just read the most recent AI (the one about your nose) and you mentioned “your wife.” So, did you married “The Skirt” and not tell us or what?
I’m so confused.
uh jill… you might look back at the AI article and notice it is written by Phil (i don’t play the drums) Collins. the same guy who wrote the 4/10 post and the 3/27 post… guest blogger, dusty calls him.
good read, dude…
Perfect.
Dusty,
I’ve been reading you for quite some time, and was quite pleased that you chimed in on these ‘pressing’ topics.
Loved what you said, and completely agree with it.
Here’s to us all hopefully not being jealous of the bystanding turds that we live with.
High respects sir.