You Know What I Hate?! – Jan 23

Barack Obama is angry today. And so am I. You’d be angry too if you had to see the Bruins up close.
Well, all the Bruins except Tim Thomas.
Photo courtesy greenwave.com

This week, I take a wooden spoon to the back side of kiboshed realignment, Timmay’s political agenda, a week with no Canucks and the race to report news first.

You know what I hate?! Waiting an entire week for a Canucks game. WHAT?! The Canucks play tomorrow at home to Edmonton, and then (because of a slow schedule and the All-Star break) they don’t play again until NEXT Tuesday against the Blackhawks. Ludicrous! Outrageous! Unacceptable! Their current 6-game home stand will span 19 days! NINETEEN!!

You know what I hate?! We aren’t going to see San Jose 6 times next season, but we’re still gonna watch the Wild four times. CRAP. Thanks to the NHLPA voting down realignment, the Canucks are stuck playing Minnesota 6 times next season, instead of San Jose, LA, and Anaheim. I want to watch SJ/VAN games all the time. ALL THE TIME. Thanks a lot, NHLPA. Buncha jerks.

You know what I hate?! Watching the Boston Bruins meet the POTUS to celebrate their 2011 Stanley Cup victory. Yep. It still hurts. Probably always will. And seeing Marchand, Lucic, Horton and Ference feted is just salt in the wound.

You know what I hate?! Players putting their own political agenda and feelings ahead of their team. On the aforementioned Bruins visit to the White House, Tim Thomas (who is a staunch Republican) refused to join his team to meet President Barack Obama, citing his political views as the reason for his absence. Wow. How about that for a lack of respect for the leader of your country? In case you didn’t know, Thomas is American. In fact, he was the ONLY American on the Bruins roster from the Stanley Cup final. Very unpatriotic, very disrespectful, and very selfish.

You know what I hate?! How the race to report news on Twitter is completely clouding people’s moral judgment and journalistic integrity (assuming we’re talking about journalists). On Saturday, the website Onware State (Penn State’s student run news site) erroneously reported (via Twitter) that longtime coach Joe Paterno died. In fact, Joe Pa was gravely ill and did eventually die Sunday morning. Later Saturday night, after realizing that his report was wrong, the student that ran the story, managing editor Devon Edwards, immediately stepped down from the paper. And I hope he learned a valuable lesson here. In journalism, it is far more important to report facts than to report first. It bugs me to no end that feel the need to be the first to report news on something (especially when it pertains to someone’s death) without being absolutely certain that it’s true. I hold journalists to a higher standard. And this was a student that was in school to study journalism, so he should be learning these fundamental elements of the job.

Now… if he was a blogger… #factsschmacts