Shut up, already.

I know this is a little late to be chiming in on the whole Jim Calhoun - Ken Krayeske fiasco, but I have too. I’ve been beaten over the head with reports about Calhoun’s inappropriate actions and his disrespect toward Krayeske, that I cannot sit in silence anymore. How can so many pundits and analysts get this issue wrong?

I’ll tell you why. Because we live in such a hyper sensitive society, that telling someone to “shut up” in a dismissive tone becomes a such an issue that the state’s Governor has to release a statement. Am I missing something?

Now it’s true that the 24-hour-news-media cycle is a hungry beast and stories like this only help to feed it until the next “big” story comes along. I will accept this fact of life, but what cannot accept is the magnification that comes along with it. Can we please have a standard of measure for news stories. Economic Stimulus Packages: Major story. Jim Calhoun calling a freelance journalist stupid and telling him to shut up: Minor story. Can we agree on this? Or if this isn’t the standard, can we at least agree on something so we don’t have to listen to a weeks worth of analysis on the subject. Because we are headed down the wrong path.

Soon, I’m going to hear about some sports figure making an inappropriate comment in their facebook status. It’ll happen! And then we’ll be forced to talk about “how it was written” and the tone of the statement. Then said sports figure will have to issue an apology and we’ll be forced to listen to the analysis of the apology. Body language experts will come out of the woodwork and note on how they can tell that the sports figure is truly sorry because “you can see it in his/her head and shoulders.” We’re almost there, we’re one Shaq twitter away.