Stupid criminals...stupider TV news

Was it just last week that I was congratulating the local TV news for some excellent work? Yes.

Dumb me.

WDSU has a new "crime and safety" expert, Howard Robertson, the sort of crusader whose entire journalistic raison d'être is keeping good citizens like you, Mr. and Ms. Good Citizen, safe in your (chaste, double) beds.

Today Howard was earning his oats by analyzing a surveillance tape from a crime scene where a transvestite robbed a Burger King:

"By looking at the vehicle pull up, we can tell that's a pickup,” WDSU crime and safety specialist Howard Robertson said. “And if you look at the rims -- you know that's not a Ford or GM. The other thing I wanted to look at was whether he got out the driver’s or passenger’s door to see if he had an accomplice, somebody who was driving his vehicle when he left. But he got out the driver’s side."

Robertson said the thief is probably a genuine cross-dresser because his necklace matched the dress, his nails appeared to be painted and the wig was well made.

"Most of the time when somebody puts on a wig they're just trying to hide their identity by putting on something like a Halloween Mask, but he's pretty," Robertson said.

Meanwhile, over at WGNO, the stunt du jour is the "Wheel of Justice" -- a sort of low-budget America's Most Wanted. And lest you think that the Channel 26 news director is using the wheel as some sort of highfalutin metaphor for our judicial system, you don't know local news:

Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops on a "dirtbag," the investigation goes!

And lest you think the station's use of "dirtbag" is some sort of lowfalutin metaphor, the WGNO graphics department is ahead of you there, too:

I'm just imagining the poor college news intern, flush with dreams of being the next Ed Murrow or Lara Logan, being told "Take this bag out in the grass, write "DIRT" on it, and get some good digital photos. Oh, and we've got a lunch pickup at Quizno's at 12:30, so make it quick."

But I shouldn't make fun of this endeavor; as the WGNO website snarls:

"It's not a game. It's not a game show. It's about YOU and it's about justice. You have the power to bring down hardened criminals. Criminals who are wrecking your neighborhood. Who make you feel unsafe. Criminals you don't want around."

(As opposed, I suppose, to the criminals you do want around.)

To aid in this endeavor, WGNO has added a new member to its news team:

Tat-2 even has his own bio on the WGNO website ("Favorite Television Shows: Cops, SWAT, Family Guy; Favorite Books: The Bible and My Louisiana Revised Statute").

My suggestion: Howard Robertson and Tat-2 should team up and go after the pickup-driving, Burger King-robbing transvestite with the fine eye for accessorizing. After all, could it be any worse than K-Ville?

Comments

[Jil]

Words fail me.

I wish they'd failed those folks, too.

[Joe Wilson]

Pretty funny stuff if it wasn't for the fact that I was crying a little bit after I read it. J-schools are really doing a good job cranking these folks out.

I got to thinking about the type of criminals you do want around and realized that you vote for them.

Joe

[Samuel John Klein]

You're not to be blamed for being snookered, Kevin. I have the same feelings whenever our local newsers remember what it is they're there for – who doesn't see a ray of sunshine pierce the miasma and think that the clouds are finally going to part?

Of course, that's what hope is all about. That they'll wake up and say "hey ... isn't what we're doing kind of evil, and shouldn't we maybe stop it just a bit?".

The only sin that could have been committed here is the sin of being surprised at it.

And Ed Murrow has been spinning in his grave for so long now that he's flown to pieces.