That's News To Me

"Who cares what John Mark Karr ate on a plane? This is not news." My wife was having one of her infrequent fits of pique. As someone who tends to let media wash over her and sample only the tiniest important bits, it seemed to me that this might be significant. If my wife was incensed by this bit of information, perhaps there was some level of significance that had been reached.
Why were we, the Bay Area viewing public, invited to consider the in-flight menu of this alleged felon? Could it be that prawns and chardonnay are the preferred diet of pedophiles, and we should be careful in our dealings with those who express similar appetites, especially if we are junior beauty contestants, or aspire to be?
The mounting irony of this moment in history is that it was within this same report that "experts" were asked what possible motivation Mr. Karr might have for coming forward at this time - ten years after the fact. One of the "experts" suggested that this would be a desperate attempt to gain notoriety at a time when the seemingly unsolvable crime had been at last moved to the back pages.
The media is a hungry beast that must stay fed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are pretty played out. The most recent terror plot was foiled. The Fall television season has yet to begin. Football is preseason, and the pennant races in baseball have yet to heat up. Do we really need to know what this guy ate on his flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles. I don't even want to consider the price of a single coach ticket from Bangkok to Los Angeles. I don't want to think about the jet fuel required to get John Mark Karr from here to there. I prefer to ponder the new pacemaker that was recently inserted into Gerald Ford. That's news.