Free Dumb of Speech– Move over, Fox News. Make way, Barbara Walters. There’s an even more despicable faux journalist out there. The blogger.From what I can tell, most bloggers are squirrelly, myopic, overweight white men who lurk in the shadows and spend their days dissing all us hard-working, underpaid reporters out there. They tend to resemble registered sex offenders in person–believe me. Sex offenders are my bread and butter. I seem to be getting a taste of my own medicine. I have penned numerous “Thin Lines” for the Alibi in which I mercilessly harped on the television news.Now there’s one blogger after my paper down here in Billy the Kid country (Alamogordo). He was actually here before I arrived. But I stumbled on his site one afternoon as I aimlessly surfed the Web during a slow news day. He loves to call my paper a “fish wrapper,” the editor a “liar” and the staff a bunch of clowns. No matter what we do. Even if we write a story about the blueness of the sky. Personally, I cannot stand the advent of the blog. It affords cowardly weasels with no gainful employment the opportunity to be “journalists,” even if they offer nothing but pure opinion disguised as news. I also loathe such shameless self promotion spots like MySpace. Ninety-nine percent of all people are not interesting enough to have an entire webpage dedicated to themselves, myself included. When I get off work tonight, I am going to go home and watch television and use my Venetian blinds for countersurveillance purposes, though I know in my heart there’s no one surveilling me. I digress. I have been reading this cretin’s undue criticisms of my rag and plotting his demise daily. It has come to my attention that though he has dissed one of my stories, he has never named me–mildly insulting. Don’t ask me why. I love attention. A few weeks back I covered a poorly attended public meeting on a special election wherein voters would decide on whether to extend the life of a certain tax. Boring stuff, really. But, lo and behold, Mr. Blogger was in the back of the room, videotaping the snorefest. My photog pointed him out. After pondering the legal ramifications involved in hitting him with a tire iron, I decided to corner him and demand an interview, smoke him out of the woodwork. At first he refused to be interviewed. I cocked an eyebrow–no one can resist a 45-degree tilt from my furious eyebrow. He eventually succumbed and told me he didn’t support keeping the tax. So I included him in my story in an attempt to engage the bastard and possibly get some coverage on his blog I pretend not to care about. I looked the next day and there I was. He said I didn’t get what he said quite right–which I did—and has since mildly dissed the story but not me personally, par for the course. The real tragedy of the situation was … he complimented me. He called me a “real journalist,” by name.What the hell does a guy have to do to get harped on around here?
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
