Thursday, December 3, 2020

Today in famous-adjacent crime:

Is...is this really news? Huh? Is what news? Are you new here? Did you click on the-I usually start these with some question or statement and a link you can click to give it context, but then I do this bit where I ask if you clicked the link and them pretend you said no and then I explain anyway. It's not necessarily funny, it's more of a running gag. 

Sorry. I sincerely hope you didn't
come here looking for new material.

Because America!
Anyway, what I want to know is, is angry construction worker firing a gun at the ground in front of Billie Lourd's house, news? I ask because an angry construction worker fired off a gun in front of Billie Lourd's house and now it's news. The gunman fled and is still out there, probably blending in the with millions of other people who just walk around with guns. The good news is that the guy just shot at the ground and no one was hurt and Billie Lourd wasn't even home at the time. And all this is really great, but it also makes this even less worthy of being a thing we're talking about right now. 

Yes, like I'm doing right now.
I get it, I'm part of the problem.
Lourd's house-huh? Who's Billie Lourd? She's an actor, she's been in a few movies and like three seasons of American Horror Story, and she also had a small role in the Star Wars sequels and happens to be the late Carrie Fisher's real life daughter and has Meryl Streep for a godmother so in many ways no matter what she does, or who randomly fires shots outside her home, that's always going to be brought up. Ok, but what does any of this have to do with cops rushing to her house?

Exactly! So all this all started when Lourd decided to have some work done on her LA home. Evidently one worker fired another. The fire-ee was understandably upset, but less understandably decided that this the kind of situation where threatening someone with a gun he just happened to carry to work was the correct response. It was not. He fled, the police showed up and now we're talking about it and it's in the news:

I guess because no one's going to click on "altercation between  
two randos, one fired a gun."unless you invoke the name of a famous

$18 million. Now you know too.
You're welcome. 
So couple of things: one, people here love guns. I don't think we go more than a minute or two in this country without someone firing one off for some reason or another. It'd be great if this sort of thing was rare enough to make it newsworthy on it's own, but we only know about this because someone who's been on TV was peripherally involved. And the other thing is that I now know how much Billie Lourd's house is worth. Which, why do I know that? It's none of my business and what possible value is that information in a story about people who aren't Billie Lourd getting in to an argument? 

Basically what I'm asking is why is this news? I know the internet is functionally infinite and just because something isn't important doesn't mean there's not room to talk about it, but is there really nothing else going on right now?
What is this? COVID? The President undermining democracy? 
Don't they know that some guy fired a gun at the ground outside the home
of a famous person who wasn't there? I guess journalism is dead.

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