MucheDumbre

I’m not going to get into the story because we’ve all heard everything there is to hear, but I can’t stay silent on one glaring problem with people today.

Shannon Burke accused of shooting of dog, wife

Notice anything?

Shannon Burke arrested for shooting dog, grazing wife

Here is the first few sentences from another news site

Who else gets angry at their dog and threatens to shoot it?

Cops say Burke got ticked at his dog, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. His solution: Pick up a handgun and threaten to shoot it.

The gun discharged, and the bullet went through the dog’s leg. The same bullet struck his wife Catherine on the side of her head, reports WESH News.

It takes that writer 53 words to finally mention the wife that was also shot, 53 words before she can get a quick nod in her direction. The entire piece is about the poor dog, what kind of dog, the threatening and shooting of the dog and Oh by the way his wife was shot in the head too.

After the Orlando Sentinel released photos of Catherine Burke and  her dog,  the Monsters of the Morning, the morning show on WTKS 104.1 took calls on the whole fiasco because they understood the need for people to vent their feelings on this. They also understood that all other locals news and radio programs were going to take advantage of the situation and talk about it so  they decided why not let the people hear and say what they want from the station at the center of the controversy.

Here’s the problem. I can’t count how many calls or how many posts on the muchedumbre forum have lamented over the dog first and then if she’s lucky, over Catherine.  There is even a thread titled

Burke fired…he injured his dog and wife but killed his career at REAL radio

In another thread, a post that reads..

What a class guy. What’s a king charles wiegh, 5 maybe 10 lbs.

Nothing about the his wife Catherine at all, just the dog.

One caller to the Monsters said Shannon Burke was on the same level as Richard McTear. Who is Richard McTear? Oh well he’s the scum-bag asshole who  after getting into a fight with his 17 year old girlfriend, grabbed their 3 month old baby and threw him on the concrete and then kidnapped him. As if that wasn’t enough, while driving down  I-275 he threw the baby out the window of his car killing him.  Now, why did this caller equate Shannon Burke to this reptile?  Because he shot his dog. Not because he also shot his wife, but because he shot the dog (the dog lived by the way). When called on this  by Dirty Jim the caller replied that the dog was innocent, the wife though…. well she could have left at anytime.

The dog.. was innocent… meaning what? That Catherine  deserved what she got because she didn’t leave? I really don’t know if that’s what people mean when they say something like that but it is a valid question that I would like someone to answer because I really don’t know of another way to take that kind of statement.

I am not excusing what Burke did in any way. But I am questioning the headlines when they read “Radio personalty shoots dog and wife” and even more I question why there seems to be so little outrage over the shooting of his wife Catherine? Even the Orlando Sentinel when putting the photos up on their website, put the dog’s photos up first!

We love our pets, we think of them like our children…but what Shannon did is not on the same level as the man who threw his own baby onto the concrete and then chucked him out of his car window while he was driving down the interstate. One is the horrific death of an infant, the other is a dog who was shot in the leg and lost it’s tail.  They are both sad, but they do not carry the same weight.

Maybe it’s all kind of like they say in Hollywood, never work with children and animals. Well, never get shot in the head by your husband after he shoots the dog because the dog will get the sympathy because it was innocent and you? Well you could have left.

I think we need to re-arrange some priorities here…