Mike looks back at some recent ‘news’

I read a lot of newspapers, both in print and on-line. These are just some of the stories that found their way on to my radar and got me thinking.


• Why is this news?

I found this item on ABCNews.com last Friday and was puzzled as to why this was on a news Web site.

Rey Mysterio Jr., a wrestler for WWE Entertainment, will wrestle Kurt Angle and Randy Orton at Wrestlemania 22 on Sunday, Apr. 2. If he wins, Mysterio, who is 5-feet-6-inches, 165 pounds, will be the lightest heavyweight titlist in pro history.

If he wins? Hello? I hate to break this to you (spoiler alert), but the outcome of wrestling matches is predetermined. If Vince Mcmahon and the heads of WWE want to make history, they will tell Angle and Orton to let Mysterio win. Putting that “if” there suggests that Mysterio has some kind of influence over whether or not he succeeds.

Is it not enough that we have pieces in national newspapers and on national news programs about “Brangelina,” “Bennifer” and “K-Fed,” that now we also have stories about wrestlers in the news as well? Much of the Mysterio story is a feature, which is fine, but the fact that the outcome will be decided outside of the ring is buried on the second page.

This just doesn’t sit well with me. It’s like saying, if Batman beats Superman in an upcoming issue of “Superman,” it will be the first time that a caped vigilante will have toppled an alien without the use of a ray gun. The outcome isn’t left up to chance or talent, like a real sporting event, so it shouldn’t be presented as such.

When reporters could be digging in to the steroids scandal in Major League Baseball or, heaven forbid, getting to the bottom of a statement from a high ranking Iraqi Air Force official, who claims that his men flew WMDs to Syria before the launching of the war, we have this story and things that are much less newsworthy.

Anyway, good luck, Rey.


• What do we do with these people?

A couple in Killeen, Texas recently went to jail for injury to a child. They encouraged their 3-year-old daughter to beat up a 5-year-old boy they were babysitting and they videotaped the beating.

Right now, the Georgia legislature is working on a bill to make divorce more difficult and some critics argue that maybe we should make marriage more difficult. What we should do is make it harder for people to have kids. Too many morons are having kids these days. They either leave them in the back seat while they got to a strip club (that happened last week, too), force them to fight neighborhood kids or screw them up some other way for the next 18 years and then set them loose on society.

It seems you need a license for everything else, but if you are physically able to you can have as many kids as you want. And, if you’re not stupid enough to videotape your debauchery, chances are the world will never know what a complete jerk you are to your children.

Thankfully, lots of criminals are also criminally stupid, so we have that going for us.


• Also in Texas ...

The Texas State Patrol started doing undercover sweeps in bars looking for drunk people. If it kind of sounds like shooting fish in a barrel, that’s because it is. Some claim that the police are doing a good thing by protecting people from dangerous drunks and making sure these people don’t become drunk drivers, possibly doing a lot of damage and perhaps even killing themselves or others. Others claim that this is entrapment and that some of the people who were fined and arrested were at hotels and had no intention of operating anything other than an elevator that evening.

While I don’t want people driving drunk, I also don’t want this country to get started on a slippery slope that has undercover cops counting your beers at a pub some night.

Why not take all of these officers who are working undercover and establish more roadblocks or why not take the Peachtree City Police Department approach and follow someone from an establishment that serves alcohol?

I’m all for saving people from drunk drivers, but let’s not try to save people from themselves. There’s plenty of other issues to deal with first. How about sniffing out some meth labs or helping out on border patrol?

I also worry that if we continue to strip down and limit our freedoms, one day we will look around and realize that there aren’t many freedoms left.


• Freedom to do stuff like this ...

Sculptor Daniel Edwards announced a sculpture of a nude Britney Spears giving birth to her first child on a bearskin rug. Edwards stated that Spears is the ideal model for Pro-Life. The sculpture is the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth next month.

I’m sure the heads of the Pro-Life movement are just thrilled.