Thursday, October 25, 2007

Rebecca Aguilar Speaks

...and it seems she's none too happy with her fate...

"I don't know if I'll survive without a blemish," she says. "Every time you Google my name now it's like 'Aguilar, suspension or ambush.' Before it was 'Aguilar, award-winner.' It's changed in a week."
Bwaaaahahaha! Payback's a cast-iron bitch, ain't it? If you ambush people on camera and get suspended for it, well, I'd guess that's generally what happens in the Internet age, but that's just one man's wild-arsed shot in the dark. But here's what gets me:
But the camera kept rolling and Walton kept talking. What most viewers remember is Aguilar asking him, "Are you a trigger happy kind of person? Is that what you wanted to do -- shoot to kill?"

Aguilar asked this in a non-confrontational tone that she maintained throughout the interview.

"The way I asked him was not in a harsh manner," she says. "I'm very careful about my tone. Because since I am a woman, I don't want to be called the b-word."
Call me crazy, but it's just scary as hell to think this woman made her career in the communication field, because she's missing something here that's just fundamental, and it pains me to think that it has to be pointed out to a media professional in a major market like Dallas-Fort Worth. Specifically -- there are just some questions that are going to come across as loaded no matter in what tone of voice you ask them, and I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that terms like "trigger happy" or "shoot to kill" loads those questions so hot that they definitely qualify as a brazen crossing of the line of decency. And it's yet another insult to my intelligence and that of many others that this reporter would think we wouldn't see those questions like that. As a commenter on The High Road said,
"This is the bare, naked face of media conceit. Let us all watch and learn."

...and if you would like to see some more evidence of said media conceit, take a gander at some of the comments here. It would seem that at least a few people in the media indeed saw Rebecca Aguilar's actions and think she did nothing wrong. For some strange reason a quote from Billy Beck comes to mind from a comment made at Tam's place as she was ruminating on the death of Kathryn Johnston -- a question that needs to be asked of the media in situations just like this one:

"...does it remotely concern you that untold numbers of your fellow Americans are beginning to hate your f**king ass with a fury that you can't imagine through those beady eyes of yours?
"It should. It really should."