TheLastManInAmerica

Somebody’s delivery lulls you to sleep

The man behind the weather map, the Editor-In-Chief

They control the world of power and disease

And you cannot suppress your curiosity

“Only Entertainment”- Bad Religion (1992)

            Indeed, news media is “only entertainment”. Anyone who has taken Journalism 101 knows the old adage, “If it bleeds, it leads” but there is also those stories that appear in the last few minutes of every broadcast. These are the “Human Interest Stories”. But sometimes, these stories are such attention grabbers that even though they may not “bleed”, they have the power to lead off the day’s headlines.

            The tale of the “man” who gave birth is one such story. Thomas Beatie, a “transgender man” gave birth to a baby girl on June 29. This isn’t anything more than a sideshow. Although they call her a man, it’s not like someone delivered a child through their penis. Thomas is still a woman, as the defining characteristic of a gender is the reproductive organs, of which Thomas still has the female variety. It’s cosmetic surgery! And to say she’s a man is the same as saying Pamela Anderson’s breasts are real. The news media just wishes to make this a story, worthy of your interest but the last time I checked, a woman giving birth is nothing new. If the reverse happened and a man got surgery to be woman and then gave birth, or a woman became a man and got another woman pregnant, that would be interesting!

            But these stories are delegated to the realm of science fiction for now, generations away from actually happening. In the meantime, a story like this is just a time-filler, meant to distract from the recycled headlines of “Obama vs. McCain” and “Gas Prices Hit New Record Highs!” They are merely trying to keep a disinterested society watching. I mean, Heaven forbid you should read a newspaper where ads don’t roll every five minutes.

            There was a time when the story of “a man giving birth” would be found in the same paper that ran articles concerning Bat Boy. But there is a void where journalists used to keep their integrity and now they are on the lay for anything. Only in the society of “Reality” TV would this pass for news. Perhaps, it’s because the reality of “The Bachelorette” is just too much for some to take and they need a story like this to calm them down? Whatever the reason, it’s nearly to the point of the two becoming equally as mind-numbing and bad for your health; soon Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul will be hosting the nightly news with Randy Jackson, the jolly, fat black guy doing the weather.        

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