Come to Think of It, All That Election Coverage Was a Total Waste of Time--We Knew That Template, Too

John Tierney's on the right track. Why do reporters insist on slavishly covering suicide bombings? "We all knew the template: number of victims, size of the crater, distance debris had been hurled, height of smoke plume, range at which explosion was heard," he writes, recalling his stints on the car-bomb beat in Baghdad and Kurdistan. "There was no larger lesson except that some insurgents were willing and able to kill civilians, which was not news."

Don't stop there, John.

Same thing with this constant drip-drip of gruesome stories about torture at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Don't we know this story already? We know the template--length of waterboarding, amount of menstrual blood, country of rendition. Enough already, guys.

And Tom DeLay's an asshole--we get it. But do we have to file a whole entire new story every time credible allegations of ethics violations emerge? I mean, all that proves is that DeLay is willing and able to take luxurious vacations paid for by lobbyists who represent special interests with business before the House. Which is not news.

And can we just drop the closeted gay Republican story while we're at it? We know that template, too.

It's such a waste to spend all those column-inches on stuff we already know when Big Recycling is just sitting there, recycling things and getting away with it.

UPDATE: For anyone who noticed, this post initially had the wrong URL linked on the word "gay," which totally wrongly implied that someone was gay. Bad cut-and-paste job on my part, and my apologies to that certain someone who I wrongly and unintentionally implied was gay.