Shame, shame ... we know your name!

I want Ricky Williams to know that I love him. I want Lindsey Jacobellis to know that I love her. I want Wayne Gretzky to know that I love him. I want the Swedish and American womens' hockey teams to know that I love them both. I'm not on board with the decision that kept Cammie Granato from skating with Team USA, but I'll always be in favor of parity.

And as much as I can't stand Jarko Ruutu (he's a Canuck for Christ's sake) ... I can't think of a team who wouldn't want him.

As for Barry Bonds, Bob Costas and his crew, Simon Cowell and his gang ... y'all can eat a big, fat d***. I like the asterisk in this case ... because if Bonds does happen to break records in what he deems his final season, there won't be an eraser big enough to strike out the stipulation attached to any Bonds record.

Costas is a guy I respect, but he should have stepped up and called the shots when NBC and its second-rate reporters decided to lambast Lindsey Jacobellis for what was nothing more than some excitement gone awry. F*** them for leveraging her star status to pull in some viewers, then dashing her brilliance with some crap wrap-up piece on her gold-medal giveaway. She made a mistake dude; she isn't' OJ masquerading as a snowboarder. What's more, she's young, and no one's heart will ever ache more than her own. She'll be back ... count on that. But to shun her and burn her skin with a scarlet letter is as shameful of an act as any we've witnessed in some time.

I was ready to call for a boycott of American Idol so that NBC could demonstrate that people really do care about patriotism. But NBC has shown itself to be even less worthy than the Fox popularity contest.

Oh, and while we're at it, I want Kelly Clarkson to know I love her. Shining Simon et al in her Grammy acceptance speech was pure genius. To be perfectly frank, I don't truly hate Simon. I could have beer after beer with the bloke. But he's a product of the so-so meets success. Every now and then, the sun shine on a dog's ass. I don't have a problem with that, except for when the dog's ass truly is an undeserving dag. It just reinforces and intensifies the asshole persona. And let's all agree that Cowell has the role down pat. He's a good guy really, but he's the one that everyone never wanted to support. So when success fell into his lap, we all moaned and mourned. Bummer that a pommie like that could snatch the gold from the rest of America, but I can't fault him for it. Just those who made it possible.

For those I've given love to -- don't let the bastards grind you down. Ricky, don't live up to someone else's vision of you. Lindsey, keep your head up baby; I believe in you. Cammie, you've been the consummate professional, and I'll forever respect you for taking the high road. Team USA, don't lose faith ... as much as it pains you, this is a good thing for women's hockey. And Team Sweden -- good luck ladies. I hope this becomes your very own Miracle on Ice. To the Great One ... keep pushing back brother. Martha Stewart ain't your cousin buddy.

To the rest of you ... for shame. Time to check your karma balance and reconcile accordingly!

Talk About a Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

If you've had the (unfortunate) pleasure of reading some of my past rants, then you've noticed me either explicitly call out or cleverly allude to the many evils of mass media. Typical stuff really -- the notion of media as your personal chief information officer, shaping precisely what you care about, how you feel about it, how measured or explosive your response should be to a particular piece of news, etc. And while I doubt it bears repeating, there's far too much editorializing in today's mainstream press (but hey, what else are you going to do for 23 hours and 44 minutes, which is exactly the amount of time a cable news network has left in a day after all the actual news has been issued).

But that's not why I write today. My purpose with this post is to let you all in my discovery -- through no small effort on my part, I've identified the fundamental flaw in American media (can't speak for other countries, so weigh in with your take if you have one). It took hours of obsessing, and countless days of silently expressing my frustration before I was finally able to pinpoint the key problems. I guess that means I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but here it goes:

We all know that folks love a good conspiracy, or in the very least, a nice melodramatic battle between polarized entities. Hence, you get the whole liberal media bias vs. the Fox News counter attack. As citizens, we're prone to seek out Hollywood tabloid dish in everything we do. So, what that means is we find ourselves wanting to laud some and vilify others in a disproportionate manner.

Hang with me ... I'm making my way to the point (you didn't think it was going to require a pre-story, did ya?).

What I'm getting at is, despite my loathing of mainstream media, I recognize and accept that there's no grand scheme or malicious intent on the part of the individual journalists and their employers (I've been a journalist, and believe me, that life isn't that exciting). Actually, I've realized this for some time now, which just made things more frustrating for me. How can I convincingly communicate or justify my opposition to something that is really more of a zeitgeist than it is a diabolical plan driven by evil and calculating forces?

Okay man, so what's the big secret? What the hell is the REAL problem with mainstream media?

Chew on this -- when you're a journalist or reporter or whatever, you have a domain to cover ... your beat. You eat, sleep and breathe that beat. And what that means is the beat becomes larger than life to you. If you're a good journalist, you report on it with fervor and passion, essentially treating the subject matter like it was the most important thing on earth.

But it isn't the most important thing to the vast majority of the general public, and that my friends is the primary flaw of this profession -- the average citizen doesn't care as much about a particular subject area as the reporter who is paid to cover it, or the news organization that profits from it.

Not surprisingly, this dawned on me while listening to sports talk radio. Talk about a group that gets lost in the relative importance of what they're covering. Imagine your teen years, when perhaps you were so fanatical about KISS that you'd paint your face on Halloween, cover your walls with their posters and completely lose yourself at one of their concerts. Because journalists are so singularly focused on their coverage areas, they expect you to greet the news in the same way you used to rock out to KISS. Like you're going to pump your fists to 500 words from the New York Times or two minutes of Brian Williams. Is that crazy man, or what?

Keep in mind it isn't just a problem with the reporters and journalists. These peoples crank out more stories than can be accommodated each day, leaving the producers and editors to decided what's news and what isn't.

Of course, these media types aren't consciously doing it, and as I said, I just don't believe it's the result of a devious plot. Rather, it arises from flaws in the journalistic process and the myopic perspectives that the media pass off as universal concerns.

Unfortunately, it's not likely that mainstream media will change its tune. The success of tabloid trash gives these organizations more than enough resolve to keep throwing a bunch of useless crap our way. I'd like to believe the continued emergence of the 'citizen as journalist' (see: blogging and/or wikis) will eventually make mainstream media obsolete. But as long as there are advertising dollars to spend, Mike Wallace and Bill O'Reilly can sleep soundly.