Ever feel like you're being stalked?

Yeah, I know why sartrean is bitter. There was a thread on it a while back. But, goddamn, do you (not you, TP) have to be such a miserable bastard to everyone?

 

Yeah, and I am not part of it because 9 out of 10 moms don't know which friggin' paper I work for. I know this because they run down a list of names of newspapers, mentioning every daily and weekly in the metro area. I have to tell them the name of the paper I work for, and they have to ask for the url -- because it's that unrecognizable to them.

I'm an ass to them because the parents are asses to me, and I'm sick of it.

 

That's why I hate these snapshot moms -- because they're idiots. They think I'm important, and usually they have me mixed up with the daily's sports columnist. Because his mugshot is in the paper almost every day, therefore he must write all of the sports copy.

I have a very low tolerance for idiots.

 

No we don't. First of all, my non-daily, thrice weekly paper (which I serve in a part-time capacity) is in the affluent section of town. Most moms don't work here, and if they do, they work in the private sector, usually for a law firm, a medical establishment of some sort, or an accounting firm. My paper is not in the practice of going to private offices and photographing the people that work there. We generally photo public figures and the like. So we don't take pictures of golf moms at their places of employment.

The principle is called being polite. It would be polite of the moms to ask if they can take a picture of me with their kid (and I will always talk them out of it -- usually because I know it embarasses the kid), but they can't do that because they're rude friggin sports moms. Instead, the expect me to be complicit in having my photograph made with their kid -- the moms just go on and do it. It'd be a little more respectful for them to ask.

 

Yep, I am an asshole. I've been doing this since the early 1990s, and years of abuse and shit from these parents has taken its toll on my psychologically. I am not taking their shit any longer, now I'm dishing it back at them, which is my perogative.

I'm also pissed that I made more money doing the same friggin thing in 1994 than I do today. That's cause enough for being an asshole.

 

I have enough experience to know to get out of the way of the television news cameras, and every other print media's photographers. You'll never see me on the 11 o'clock sports on TV.

FYI, my shop laid me off around Christmas '06, only to beg me to string for them. There's this whole saga of my paper discontinuing its sports section altogether, they fire me, then they realize they can't NOT have a sports section. So they beg me for a month to work as a "stringer" whose putting in about 38-45 hours a week just for this one rag.

And FYI, I've been accepted to law school and I will enroll in mid-August 2007. So I'm working my way toward another career!

 

They never seem to get that photo of the male coach slapping female players on their asses.

 

Well, in my ignorance I thought people would treat you with dignity and respect, but I don't get that in-house or from any of the fuckers that read my rag's website.

 

People are miserable bastards to me, so why not. I've just been doing this bullshit for too long now. Yes, I am bitter. Being a journalist in a dying medium is enough to be bitter about.

 

That ain't my quote, Tom!

 

You must have a hard time with mirrors.