A fashion statement

I guess the folks at CNN were hoping they could make fun of themselves before anyone else did.

T-shirts!

Apparently (and surprisingly!), they don’t read my blog.

the news story of the century!

…or at least the year, is apparently the birth of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s twins, an event that may or may not have happened yet.

Sarah Ivens, OK! magazine editor, explains:

“This is an absolutely huge, huge story for us [...] Essentially you have two of the most beautiful, famous people in the world. We’ve all seen they’ve had one baby, Shiloh, and it is the coolest, most adorable baby on the planet. And this time they’re having two? It can’t get any better.”

No, indeed.

(cough)

winners are losers! (f*%!ing CNN, pt. 3)

For the past several months, CNN has sponsored a series of articles profiling people across the country who have lost dramatic amounts of weight–most of them through healthy diet and exercise.

I have no problem with this in theory. The individuals that they have chosen have all been pretty clear-cut examples of people who needed to make lifestyle changes for the sake of their health. But, strangely, this doesn’t seem to be the angle that these stories take.

Take this excerpt from the most recent installment:

Over the next three years, she lost 120 pounds and dropped seven dress sizes. Wygal, who’s 5 feet 10 inches tall, says the fear of gaining weight motivates her to stick to her diet and exercise regimen because she never wants to look like she did at 295 pounds.

This woman was eating a diet that consisted primarily of fast foods and barely able to do more than 15 minutes of cardiovascular activity at a time, and they publish that her motivation to stick to her new, healthy lifestyle is the “fear” of “looking like she did at 295 pounds”?? Not fear of having a heart attack by the time she was 40. No, the fear of looking fat is apparently much worse.

And so, in the end, the message that’s sent isn’t really about health at all. And these sorts of transparently vapid messages make it so much easier for people whose health is adversely affected by their weight to discount weight loss messages entirely. It leaves a lot of people to lose in the end.

f*%!ing CNN, pt. 2

And now, a non-news story designed to scare kids and their parents away from a potentially life-saving vaccine.

Journalists should have to take something akin to the Hippocratic Oath that promises they will write to help humanity, not harm it.

Asshats.

f*%!ing cnn, pt 1

You’ve probably heard about the 7-year-old little girl in Detroit who shielded her mother from her crazy ex-boyfriend when he tried to murder her a couple weeks back.

Today, CNN ran a follow-up story highlighting the fact that the child has a learning disability:

Alexis is learning-disabled and lags behind other youngsters her age. As a result, police say it may never be known whether Alexis meant to shield her mother from the bullets with her body.

As someone who taught a lot of kids with learning disabilities the past couple of years, I’m not sure if I can put into words just how disturbing this statement is to me.

First of all, having a learning disability does not mean you’re stupid. In fact, a kid can only be diagnosed with a learning disability if there is a notable disparity between their academic performance and their raw aptitude–i.e., poor school performance coupled with average or above average aptitude. Second of all, last time I checked, police officers weren’t the folks most qualified to analyze the capabilities of learning disabled children. And third of all, the whole tone of the comment makes it sound like people with learning disabilities are wackos. Having a learning disability has as much to do with mental or emotional stability as it does aptitude, and to say this kid just didn’t know what she was doing in the situation is degrading and ignorant.

CNN, you get an F for “fucking irresponsible reporting.”