Stupid...Stupid....STUPID!

Wow, did the stupid stars align this past weekend or what?
At the box office, the epic movie, um, Epic Movie beat out the competition, raking in $19.2 million dollars. This despite not being pre-screened for reviewers. Don't people know by now that studios don't bother to pre-screen movies they know are absolute dreck? I'd hate to think that nearly ten million people are so ignorant as to go to a movie they know ahead of time is going to suck.
But then, given the level of stupidity about to be revealed, I shouldn't be surprised.

I used to toboggan as a kid. Yup: overprotected, sheltered, mollycoddled ol' me spent many a winter hour sledding down a hill. Actually, the preferred activity at my school was to slide down an icy incline standing up--which strikes me as perhaps even more dangerous. And yes, I took my fair share of spills. I've broken my nose three times, and I'm pretty sure one of those times was when I reached the bottom of the hill and just kept going.
I assure you, no self-respecting kid ever came out to slide equipped with a helmet. If he had, I'm pretty sure somebody would have ripped it off his head, thrown it on to the school roof, and beat him up, just on general principles.
And yet, a couple of Vaughan city councillors have teamed up with some doctors and recommended that the government pass legislation requiring all kids to wear helmets while sledding.
Somebody's got a brain injury, and I don't think it's the kids.
How many millions of children sled, slide, or skate down hills every winter? How many tens of millions of times do they do it? And how often is somebody seriously hurt?
Now, of those serious injuries, how many occur because the kid was dumb enough to pick a hill dotted with trees, or fences, or one that bottoms out onto a road?
God, it feels weird for me to be saying this...Ken Breadner, Jr., who never so much as attempted to climb a tree, knowing full well he'd fall out and break his neck....
There are risks in life. You take one just getting out of bed. Statistically, you take a big one every time you get in a bathtub, or descend a flight of stairs. Surely you shouldn't have to wear a helmet on those occasions?
If we slide much further down this hill, we'll all be living in bubbles. Nobody will ever do anything that might result in injury. We'll become a world o' wusses, ripe for the picking. Pathetic.

Next entry: the Pickton trial. I'm not going to write about it--I'll save that for its conclusion, which should be in about a year. No, what I want to concentrate on is the media coverage, or rather, the ridiculous (but oh-so-predictable) reaction to same.

For those few of you who may not know, Robert "Willy" Pickton stands accused in the deaths of six Vancouver prostitutes. They only went to trial with six because it was felt the twenty-one other known victims--there may have been many more--made the case too complex. Pickton has pled not guilty, which means an endless parade of horror must be mounted for the edification of a jury; the manner of at least some of the deaths is unspeakably obscene, making Paul Bernardo look gentle by comparison.

Herewith, a sample letter to the editor, in this case, of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. I've seen substantially identical letters in four other papers; I'm pretty sure by now that every paper in the country has published at least one letter like this:

I thought The Sun arrived in my mailbox January 23 -- but no, it was The Record. It must have been the sensationalist headline: "I Was Gonna Do One More -- Make It An Even Fifty" that made me think I had the other paper by mistake.
I do not need to know about the "gruesome revelations" or "shocking public details".
My being informed about the trial of an individual charged in connection with multiple slayings over 4,000 kilometres away is of little importance. So I refused to read that article and will continue to avoid any other sensationalist articles thrust at me by The Record.
Sheila Brown
Waterloo

I'll give Sheila some credit: her letter is milder in tone that most. Moreover, she notes she "refused to read" that article (making me wonder how she knew it contained "gruesome revelations" and "shocking public details", but anyway...)
I'd like to correct Sheila on one minor point before I head on to the meat of her letter: the Toronto Sun would never have printed that headline. Too much ink.
Sheila asserts that her "being informed about [the Pickton trial] is of little importance."
To her.
That's perfectly okay: it's up to each of us to determine what's important. Me, I'm not so sure I need to know about every last spatter of gore, either.
But it happened. All of it. There appears to still be some doubt in at least one person (Pickton) 's mind who did it, but it all happened. If a tree doesn't fall to chronicle a murder, does that somehow make it didn't happen? I don't think so.
Most of the letter writers in some way question the need for coverage of such a horrible event. Sheila, above, bases her objection on the distance of the event from her home, an attitude I find ridiculously provincial (and, might I add, very common in this city which thinks it's a village). You know, next year we might uncover a serial killer in Waterloo Region. If that were to (heaven forbid) happen, would we have exclusive rights to the story? I don't think so.

Does someone's assertion that he killed 49 women qualify as news? I hope so! How many would he have to kill before it could make the papers, as far as these letter-writers are concerned? A hundred? A thousand? Hell, I believe a confession to one murder is news, especially if the confessor then turns around and pleads not guilty. Where do these people get off, telling the newspaper what they can and can not print?

The simple solution to news you don't want to read: don't read it. I'm an avid reader of the Toronto Sun, the tabloid Sheila impugns in the above letter. Rarely, however, will you catch me reading the reportage, which is often sloppy and yes, sensationalistic. I simply leaf past all that in search of the editorials, the entertainment, and the sports sections, all of which are second to none. Never would I for one second suggest the Sun shouldn't print lurid headlines. They appear to sell papers, after all.

Freedom of the press means the freedom to print things you might not like.
Freedom of movement means--or it ought to--the freedom to rocket down a hill...and maybe, just maybe, to hurt yourself.
Freedom of assembly means the right to assemble at a cineplex and watch Epic Movie. Though I can't imagine why you'd want to.