The Case of the Abbottabad Abbatoir: A Sharon Tay Murder Mystery (TM)

A CBS anchor in Los Angeles is terming the death of Osama bin Ladin a "murder," steve_in_hb tells me:

Local CBS2 news anchor just made the following statement while pimping their 8:00 KCAL9 coverage of OBL: "new reaction on the murder of the terrorist mastermind." Murder? Apparently, the killing during legal combat operations of a person who 1) declared war on the US and 2) masterminded a series of attacks, generally targeting civilians, is murder.

A charitable person would assume that, while it was a horrible misuse of the language, it was probably merely a slip of the tongue. However, when I went to their website to write a complaint I found that someone else had already complained about one of their stories describing his death as murder. That complaint (post and link here) was posted 20 hours before the occurence I witnessed. While it appears the earlier complaint refers to a guest describing OBL's death as murder, the occurrence that angered me was a direct statement by Sharon Tay who is described on their website as an anchor.

I asked, to make sure of the context: Did she tease an upcoming interview by asking "Was it murder?" That would also be awful, but at least it would be a question.

No, he informs me. Sharon Tay called it a "murder" in a simple statement.

They cut to her briefly during the CBS2 coverage to pimp the KCAL9 8:00 pm coverage - she rattled off the stories they would be covering and made the direct statemnt "new reaction on the murder of the terrorist mastermind." She didn't say something like "some calling OBL's death murder", etc.

So there you go: Local CBS news reader Sharon Tay in Los Angeles thinks SEAL Team 6 just conducted a state-sanctioned murder.

I wonder what their motive was? Maybe they were all named in his will as beneficiaries. Maybe they wanted to take control of his lucrative vinyards. Maybe he was blackmailing them all with nudie pictures they'd had taken as young men.

Who knows? But I love a murder mystery.

"I need to dust for fingerprints!
That is what you do for fingerprints, right?
You dust for them? Whatever it is, I'm doing
that fingerprint-thing."

From her bio:

Sharon loves traveling the world and speaks Spanish and Cantonese.

Ah. I notice "English" isn't listed. Maybe she just struggles with simple English words.

posted by Ace at 11:40 AM

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