I Should Be (3)

a journalist. Hey, my claims are as unsubstantiated as anyone else's. If I drilled a grieving mother as to the whereabouts of her missing 2-year old son, driving her to suicide, I wouldn't devote the entire next month of my show to defecating on her character and implying that she murdered her son.

The roles of a journalist and that of a jury are different. A journalist reports facts and all sides of a debate; a jury determines a person's innocence or guilt. It's a pretty distinct difference. If I was a journalist, I also wouldn't smear makeup all over my face until I covered up the dirtiness. I wouldn't take on an ironic stage name, for example- I would try to "report" with grace, if that happened to be my last name.

I also wouldn't go on the warpath against all people who aren't American (or against those who don't fit my conception of what is an American). I would report all sides of issues such as, let's just say, outsourcing and illegal immigration. If I decided to become an isolationist, I'd save my covertly racist opinions for dinner parties, instead of exclaiming them at the expense of journalism on my CNN television program.

If I heard a hot tip, I'd try to get confirmation before reporting it. I wouldn't attempt to put the fear of Jesus in the viewer/reader, but instead I'd allow the reader to become more knowledgeable about an issue. Or if not more knowledgeable, I at least wouldn't just make shit up.

I wouldn't report facts as opinions. Here, let me give this whole fact thing a try (keep in mind, these are facts, not liberal bias):

• Al Qaeda and Iraq had no substantial link before the Iraq war.
• Saddam Hussein had no link to the attacks on September 11, 2001.
• The war in Iraq has lasted over 3 years.
• There have been no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq.
• Osama bin Laden is still at large.
• Many more Iraqis have died than lives lost on 9-11 (a report said over 600,000).

Hmm, now I have a weird tingle in my head. And look, I still retained the plot of last week's Laguna Beach.