By Ryan Parker
Saturday had to be one of the weirdest days I’ve had in quite some time. I awoke to a fire drill. A fire drill! On a Saturday! I can’t tell you how pissed I was that I awoke to a fire drill. I couldn’t even use the restroom before I trudged outside to wait for the inspection or whatever they do during fire drills because we had no water and the toilets were backed up with shit and paper products. So I walked to the sack in sandals and shorts in ass-cold weather to relieve myself.
I returned only to sit out in the ass-cold for another ten minutes. I was wearing shorts and sandals. It was utter crap. But it only got better. So I finally was allowed to return to my humble hole in the pit I call Threlkeld Hall. I think to myself that I’d like to brush my teeth and take a shower. Well there was still no water and the toilets were still encrusted with shit. At least I can still watch basketball, I thought to myself. Wrong again.
A space shuttle ‘sploded in Texas instead. You’d think that after the Challenger ‘sploding in ’86 the brain trust at NASA would have thought for maybe a second that we shouldn’t fly when it’s ass-cold outside. Maybe it’s a coincidence and maybe it was just fate telling me that day was going to suck. To my next delight, I found that the “news” of the shuttle crash is on every network plus their multiple cable counterparts. ESPN had terrible hoops games on, and both the Cards and the Cats were on networks today. At least the Cats were on JP Sports and those wonderful folks at WAVE3 so graciously opted to allow us to watch our basketball game instead of news of a crash no one cared about that was being broadcast on dozens of other stations.
The same cannot be said for CBS. I tell you, I kind of hated CBS before Saturday but this had to be the last straw. Despite many calls for IU and U of L fans, the game would not be broadcast because Johnny McCarealot decided that we should all suffer through pointless speculation and breaking news that the crew had probably not survived. No fucking shit they didn’t survive. Did you see the footage they played repeatedly of the shuttle ‘sploding? It’s as if they played it over and over because they know how much we all love to see stuff go down in flames, how we all really relish in seeing violent images on our screen, and how we all enjoy moronic statements such as “the shuttle is gone.” DUH! I knew it was gone when I saw the flames and the debris. When something explodes, there usually isn”t much left. So anyway, CBS releases a statement scroll at the top of the screen basically saying, “Screw you guys who want to watch basketball instead of a news story of which we have little information that is also being run on twelve other stations, you insensitive unpatriotic bastards.”
At least I was able to watch UK drub South Carolina, though I missed the exciting Cards comeback on IU, which ended in an amazing 19-point victory. If I sound insensitive, it’s because I am. I see news like this all the time, of innocent lives extinguished. It sucks, but once you’ve seen it a few times, you don”t need to see it again. You know the moral of the story. It’s trite, and I’ve got better things to do. I read internet message boards after the game to see others’ thoughts on the game and I read posts like “those astronauts are American heroes.” Heroes my ass, all they did was die. Sorry, but death does not make you heroic. I’m sick of all this patriotism and heroism and being labeled as a radical or a traitor because I verbalize what part of nearly everyone was thinking when that shuttle went down: I don’t care.
This is the sole opinion of Ryan Parker, who is a sophomore communications major and a columnist for The Louisville Cardinal. Contact: [email protected]
