Why is our Media addicted to Idiot News?
Wed Jan 02, 2008 at 09:50:19 AM PDT
I know that the primary season kicks off this week. I just thought some could use some levity, a departure from the Obama/Edwards/Hillary sucks because XYZ for a minute.
Reading the headlines at MSNBC, one's eye is usually drawn to the sensationalistic. Sometimes, the human interest leaps off the page. Sometimes the human interest is so ridiculous, it really calls for a little deeper reading.
Leap, please.
MSNBC runs with an interesting story of a poor, middle-aged man who found a check on the ground for $185,000, made out to a woman.
Damone, who receives government-issued food stamps for low-income workers and works at a McDonald's fast food restaurant, said he did not think twice about trying to cash it. Instead, the 47-year-old took a bus Monday from his Jewett City home to a bank and returned the check to the niece of the landlord to whom the check was written.
She thanked Damone with a $50 bill.
What a great story. What a sterling example of a humble poor person who is honest and knows hard work is the only get rich quick scheme. And his reward was great. $50 is some tall corn for returning a useless piece of paper to someone instead of just tearing it in half and mailing it.
I would think that anyone who has the ability to make good on a check for $185,000 knows the system well enough that when the check turns up missing, to call the bank and put a stop payment on the check, possibly even changing the account number, as someone now has that person's checking account number and signature. Pain in the neck, sure.
MSNBC continues:
Damone said that although he knew $185,000 could pay his rent and other bills for a long time, he was never tempted to try to cash it and splurge.
He says he remembered his mother's words: If you take something, you lose three times that amount —and if you do something good, something good comes back to you.
Reggie Damone never had $185,000 in his hands. He had a worthless piece of paper that was probably already cancelled. What would his options be? If he walked into a currency exchange to cash it, they'd laugh, or call the cops, or both. If he walked into a bank and tried to open a bank account, claiming to be the woman on the check, the police would show up before he started filling out forms.
But nobody writes any of that in this 5 paragraph article, which was important enough to garner front page real estate on MSNBC. Feel-good pap about a poor man finding the equivalent of a bag of money. Except that he didn't.
I realize I'm being petty. It's just a human interest story. But the story isn't so simple that good old down home honest and upbringing and listening to one's mother kept someone from ill-gotten riches. Our banking system is set up so that this guy would have not even gotten to step one had he even "been tempted" to cash the check.
The real danger for the writer of the check was in having their bank account drained dry in 6 months, had anyone who knows the system found the check. Why did the lazy writer not explore that?
The worst part of this entire story is that 402 users gave this a rating of 4 out of 5. This isn't even feel-good pap!! We're 6 days away from Christmas!! Had the writer tied that in, it would be front page with a picture for half an hour.
The media makes me sick.
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