Cable news: a waste of air space

So what the heck? JonBenet Ramsey? Are you kidding?

I was doing something or other this past week and had CNN on in the back ground when I heard the anchor utter the "breaking" news: "Authorities in Thailand have arrested a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case."

It caused a few different reactions for me. Firstly, I had to briefly refresh my memory as to what the JBR murder case actually was. Secondly, I had to make sure I had heard it was actually Thai authorities who arrested the suspect, and for a short period of time I was trying to comprehend some reason for that. Finally, a feeling of sadness washed over me as I realized the media in this country would again be covering the shit out of this story and I would unfortunately be subjected to endless speculation about the original murder and how this suspect may or may not be somehow tied to it.

That seems to be pretty much what has happened since then. The story has also, not un-expectedly, gotten even more bizarre. The suspect in custody claims to have been the one who killed JonBenet, however, he claimed it was an "accident" induced while strangling her after some sort of sexual act. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) his ex-wife's story does not match his. She claims he was in Atlanta with her on Christmas Eve of 1996. However, that is where the Ramsey's hailed from originally, and apparently they kept a house there and moved back after their daughter was killed.        

And recently, it was announced by multiple news outlets Karr had recently visited a sex change clinic in Thailand and consulted about a sex change operation.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Whatever the final conclusion, I like what blogger Nancy Nall (link: http://nancynall.com) had to say about it all: "I have no clue what's going on in this Ramsey case thing, other than perhaps this: John Mark Karr is a dark angel sent from hell to prove that watching cable news is a total waste of time."

Eric Kochneff
columnist