Owens' Country Sausage

Guess whose fault yesterday's T.O. extravaganza was. Wait for it, wait for it... No fair. You peeked. Yup, it was all because of the media. Says who? The media, duh. Or at least Jay Hart in The Morning Call, a Pennsylvania paper. He writes about "the suicide attempt that wasn't" and how T.O. got turned into Scott Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey and Natalee Holloway--and why not the Lindbergh baby and O.J. too, while we're at it. But, hey, writes Hart:

"What do we in the media care, now that we've swept the hours of speculation under the rug, wiped our hands clean and can start fresh again? Actually, we won't do that. Why would we, now that we have a juicy little story about a story that never happened?

As hard as you might find this to believe, we — and by we, I mean the media — hold the rest of the world to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. It's easy to do when there's no accountability.

We can judge whom we want, for what we want, without ever looking in the mirror. And if we're wrong, well, it's OK, because we were just trying to report something we thought was for the common good, which trumps all."

Maybe Hart's got a point, but I could do without the smug, finger-wagging self-righteousness. It was fascinating, OK, and while Owens may have unresolved issues, it's not as though he's lived his life trying to duck the spotlight. This is the man who once said from the sidelines, "I love me some me!" This is a man who spent the summer pimping the autobiography he wrote with his agent's brother. This is a man who conducts press conferences in front of his house. Yup. Blame the media. Me, I like Ed Bark's take today: Everyone said they couldn't care less, nobody could stop watching. And that, pal, ain't the media's fault. --Robert Wilonsky