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By Jeremy Schiffres, Daily and Sunday Freeman, Kingston, N.Y.

Monday, July 9, 2007

All the news that isn't fit to print

Have you been following this ridiculous story about Miss New Jersey, Amy Polumbo?
Last Thursday, Polumbo’s lawyer, Anthony Caruso, announced someone was trying to blackmail the beauty queen with old photographs of her and demanding she step down.
Caruso, pressed by reporters, said the photos were not pornographic (a la the Vanessa Williams scandal of 1984). But he wouldn’t show the photos to the media. Then he changed his tune a bit, and said the captions attached to the photos, not the photos themselves, were troubling. But he wouldn’t show the captions to the media.
Thankfully, intelligent reporters started to see this as a non-story (and possibly a publicity stunt) and turned their attentions elsewhere. But then Caruso announced on Sunday that another blackmailing package had been received (and here’s the shocker: he wouldn’t reveal its exact contents), and the media was back on the trail. By Monday, Polumbo and Caruso were doing the rounds on the morning TV news shows – all of whom were ready, willing and able to lap this thing up like they were dogs dying of thirst -- and the story was the lead item on Yahoo’s online news site for most of Monday morning.
This is what qualifies as news today? The lawyer for a completely unknown, non-celebrity beauty queen claims she’s being blackmailed – and won’t even offer proof – and this becomes more important than the carnage in Iraq, the deadly flooding in Texas and the devastating wildfires in the western United States? C’mon, even the news that Sony is cutting the price of its PlayStation 3 by 17 percent is more exciting!
I mean, for heaven’s sake, it’s not like the person being blackmailed is the president, the speaker of the House or -- God forbid! – Paris Hilton. It's only Amy – hold on, what’s her last name again? – oh yeah, Polumbo. Sorry, had to go back and look at what I typed a few paragraphs ago.
Sarcasm aside, if this woman really is being threatened, I hope the appropriate law-enforcement agencies are looking into the matter and catch the person responsible for the blackmail. But until then, do we really need constant updates of a story that barely was interesting to begin with and in which there’s nothing new to report?

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