Nugget.

So, I’m checking out the sport news this morning and see that the NBA All-Star team has been announced in full (yeah, this might not be the most exciting blog entry). So, anyway, the headline for this article is “The Stars Come Out,” which is fine and innocuous, as a SI.com article about something as frivolous but entertaining as an All-Star Game likely should be, but then the subheading reads, “Carmelo does not make squad.”

Now, does every single thing have to have a story attached to it to make it controversial? Can’t some things in our lives just exist as a playful diversion? Does the media have to make everything a controversy? The first six paragraphs in the only SI.com article I found about the announcement of the reserves for the teams were about Carmelo Anthony being left off—before we even mention that three members of one team were picked and the guy who’s the best player on the best team making it on.

Denver Nugget star Carmelo Anthony is a good basketball player who lead the league in scoring but plays in a conference where every team seems to have a superstar or two. But he got into a well-publicized fight (and, oddly enough, every NBA fight becomes well-publicized) and was suspended for a few games, so this omission gives us a chance to remember that. And, honestly, I wouldn’t have even noticed he was missing from the team if the first six paragraphs hadn’t told me. Six.

Now, I could've included a picture of Carmelo Anthony, but that would, it seems to me, indicate I was engaging in the same type of reporting as the people I'm criticizing. So, instead, I include a picture of a Caramello bar, which shares all of its letters with Carmelo's first name.

It seems to have been building in all media over a long period of time – the first reaction on the Oscar nominations was “Dreamgirls got screwed” even though the movies nominated for Best Picture give us more stories and angles than you could possibly want (and Dreamgirls was nominated for a boatload of stuff, just not best picture). Besides, if you want to complain about a movie that should been nominated for Best Picture and didn’t, that would be “Children of Men,” but I’m complaining about said trend, so I shouldn’t engage in it.

I wonder if the WMU English Departmental Newsletter takes this tack with the Creative Writing Awards? “Poetry Awards Announced: Olsen Doesn’t Win.” Likely not. Those jerks'll probably just announce the winners and be done with it. They clearly don't get it.

Oh, and Suns guard Steve Nash, who has made comments critical of the war effort in Iraq, also made the team. He’s also the two-time defending league most valuable player and a likely front-runner to win it again, but who cares about that? Even if he does win it again, we’ll just be talking about how much Kobe was screwed out of the award. Sigh.