Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Not Always Good News Lou

Admittedly, I've had my panties in a bunch all day.  I overslept this morning (not for anything in particular, but it set my day wrong from the start).  Then I woke up and saw that someone was bitching about my grammar on last night's blog post and then excusing her bitching by saying that she "had to comment" because she was a teacher (Yes, folks, I'm a teacher. An English teacher, to boot. The grammar issue was that I had used "that" instead of "who" when referring to a group of people**.). And then Roommate was still so sick, and I felt bad because I basically made him come out to the Waterfront show on the 4th when he really should have stayed home in bed.  (It was really fun, and he had lots of fun, but still... bad best friend).  And then, and then...

But even so, I'm not always the Good News Blogger.  (That's here-- and by the way, she won 3rd place for Best Louisville Website from Louisville Magazine this month... and while I'm gearing up to bitch: THIRD place? Really? We can do better folks.)  So there's this:

I can't believe more people aren't talking about the fact that we had THREE murders in Louisville on July 5. Them's New Orleans numbers, folks. There was a murder-suicide at LG&E this afternoon, and two young men were shot in the middle of the night at Sheppard Square in Smoketown. Totally tragic. Three murders on the same day means that yesterday represented 10% of the murders for the whole year so far for Louisville.

And barely a peep.  Heck, you know that I love WFPL with a burning NPR-geek love, but the Sheppard Square homicides didn't even warrant a mention on their news blog.  (If the Courier-Journal is in a downward spiral-- which it is-- we need to look to someone to pick up the slack, and I'm hoping it will be WFPL.)

But you know why we didn't hear torrents of dismay on the Twitterbox and in the mainstream media in general?  Because everyone and their sweet little Auntie Mae were frothing at the mouth about the Casey Anthony verdict. This generation's OJ Simpson (who wasn't even a sexy former-NFL-player/actor before the crime-- oh come on now, he was sexy) hogged the airwaves and threatened to crash the interwebs.

Remember what I said about media not existing in a vacuum?  That every newspaper (like the C-J) is moving closer to being the mutant offspring of Sports Illustrated and People Magazine?  The media is giving the People what they want.  The Nancy Graces of the world exist because people WANT THEM TO.

According to Twitter (and I have no evidence that this is spot-on truth, but the number seems reasonable), in 2008-- the year that Caylee Anthony was murdered (or died in a pool, or whatever)-- 569 children under the age of 4 were murdered.  Heinous, tragic, awful.  As someone who is not necessarily childless by choice, I always have a steaming, irrationally extreme hatred for anyone who mistreats a child.  A child is a gift and a blessing and a miracle.  If you're lucky enough to have one (or two or nineteen), be the best parent you can possibly be. It's the most important job you'll ever have.

We did this, folks.  We created Casey Anthony, "Media Superstar."  And not only did she overshadow all national news today (oil spill in Montana, anyone?), she overshadowed the important news that 10% of the murders for 2011 in Louisville were committed today.  And that made this already-too-cynical blogger more cynical than ever.  We need to be better than this.

*gets off soapbox, kicks it over, and exits stage right*

** Yes, the grammar was wrong.  No, I'm not going to fix it.

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