Um... why am I hearing this?

[strredwolf]

As some of you know, a "professional" wrestler was found dead at his home in Georgia along with his family.  They're ruling it a murder-suicide, the wrestler hanging himself after dispatching his wife and son.

Okay, up front, I'm not a fan of the WWE.  To me, it's low-grade entertainment and channel-switching fodder.  I was one glad they lost the case of who owns "WWF" (now in the furry hands of the World Wildlife Fund).  They can keep to whatever channel they have made a deal with, as long as they don't go outside that boundary and I can easily change to something more intelligent... like Barney the Dinosaur.

What gets me is:

• The murders are in Georgia.  Why are they reporting them on the local newscast in Maryland as local news?  I mean, they're at least five states between me and Georgia.  Did you flunk geography with the same person that thinks "Las Vegas" is a state?
• Apparently alot of folk actually care about this, because the murders got more press than the usual police blotter and whatever was done at the next "wrestling match."  Note I quote that not only for the general disdain for the sport, but also for the fact that WWE basically canceled the "event" and made it a tribute for the wrestler... before all the facts were in.  Boneheads!
• It's being treated as regular news instead of "sports" or more correctly "entertainment."  Come on, can we stop being that deprived for any tidbit that's comming over the wire?  Maybe we can get back to semi-normal since Paris Hilton has been released back into the wild.  Too bad they didn't tag her...

Drew Curtis is right.  This is all becoming a load of fark.  Baaah!  Crabby ol' WolfSkunk....

Comments

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

My wife is a wrestling fan. I find it kind of annoying myself, but I end up soaking it up passively when she's watching it in the living room. It's essentially just a giant soap opera with athletics tossed in. My wife is rather broken up over it though.

As for canceling and making a tribute show, they're planning on apologizing for it on their tuesday show here. (Which just happened as I was typing it here.) You're right, they didn't have all the facts in. They've done tributes like this before with short notice, like with Eddie Guerrero. What's even worse than that is they did a fake story of the owner of the company being blown up inside his limo just a couple weeks before it happened, so when it did happen nobody thought it was real.

As for it being treated as news, isn't it a combination of the two? You didn't see them reporting the deaths at VT as "education." You did hit on an appropriate combination though, since wrestling calls itself "Sports Entertainment." That means this is "Sports Entertainment News."

As for why it's being treated as a local story, I have no farking idea.

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

Its a conspiracy or at least the same reason Parris Hilton getting out of jail is news. I don't wanna know, I don't care, and frankly, there's much better news to be covered. At least forest fires are natural disasters that affects a lot of folks. Those I can stand listening to on the news.

--Salen

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say paris hilton getting out of jail is a conspiracy. It's because we have a whole heaping pile of ignoramuses in the country, and the free market DOES work to give the masses what they want. The facts are that the ratings go up when they talk about the stupid spoiled rich girl, so they do more of that. Shows that didn't show her tanked in the ratings.

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

And thats why I hate the news. Or at least the Celeb-News that hovers around folks. Seriously bothers me that they give that chick the time of day, let alone her own show to act stupid on, and yet I have to turn to NPR to actually hear any sort of foreign news that isn't Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan (The Tic-Tac-Toe of Foreign News!), or anything related with 'the War'.

Oh well. That would probably explain why I don't watch TV much anyways. Too much static to useful signal.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

I've not really watched news on TV since the mid 90's.

Pretty much all I watch on TV is Fox (new House episodes) USA (for House reruns and Psych) Cartoon Network (Anime) and the SciFi channel. I have a DVR that lets me do a rapid skip through the commercials so that reduces the static. It also has acceleration of the content, (I typically run shows 30-40% faster than normal) so I can watch and hour long show in about 30 minutes.

[bibliophage.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I think the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) should have told the World Wildlife Fund to stuff it. (They actually retain the right to do that. They didn't turn over the name, they just put it in abeyance).

Noone is likely to get the two mixed up, because of context. You're unlikely to have someone thinking that the fat guy in spandex is going to go out and help two rare squirrels screw each other in a tree. Conversely, it's unlikely that a bear will jump up and hit Jesse Ventura with a chair.

(note, I'm not fond of wrestling as it's done today. In the 70's and early 80's, it was still choreographed, but it was fun to watch. Nowadays, it's so .. I don't know. Plasticized?)