I was all set to write another post complaining about Toby Keith when I heard the most astonishing thing on the Sports Animal, so I'm forced to blog about that instead.
I was delivering Meals On Wheels late this morning, and as I was driving around Craig Humphreys was droning on and on for what seemed like an hour about Barry Bonds and was giving his same old tired opinions that he must have given at least 300 times by now. I was beginning to grow concerned that the old people would not get the lunches I was delivering them, because I kept falling asleep at the wheel. Fortunately for the health of the local elderly population, Humphreys then said something that surprised me. He said, "BBJ, have you even shown any of Bonds' chase for the home run record on Channel 4?" This came as a total shock to me, because I had been listening for a good length of time and I had no idea anyone else was on the air with Craig Humphreys.
Anyway, here is Bob Barry, Jr.'s response, paraphrased:
"Nope, I haven't shown him in two years. And I'm proud of it. He hit number 751 the other day and I yawned. I just don't care about him."
I almost drove off the road when I heard this. There it is, folks. That, in a nutshell, is the sorry state of our local media. This joker is not covering Barry Bonds' chase for Hank Aaron's home run record simply because he doesn't like Barry Bonds. Forget whether or not something is newsworthy, BBJ just reports on people that he cares about. It's as if he thinks the news is his platform to promote people that are interesting to him, as opposed to a place to, you know, report the news. He's like a 12-year old girl who's ignoring her friend because she made her mad.
Say what you want about Barry Bonds, and I could say plenty, but he is a huge news story in the sports world. It's probably the biggest story in baseball over the last year or so. Heaven forbid Bob Stoops ever gets on BBJ's bad side, because we might have to let KFOR's viewers know that the OU football season is going on.
Bob Barry Jr. has many things going for him. For instance, he seems like a nice, affable fellow. Also, he's not Dean Blevins. He is not, however, the greatest journalist in the world. It's a proud day for the Gaylord College of Journalism.
