This is why I don't watch local news

So, the latest bit of sabre-rattling from Kim Jong Il has got East Asia and the West rattled, as usual, and rushing to make the usual denouncements and stern warnings which will make no impression on North Korea at all. It's how the game works, it's the way it's been for the last 50 years, and I can guarantee you that no one I worked with in Korea will pay more than a minute's attention to this piece of news.

I hate local news with a passion, and will leave a room to avoid watching it, but tonight, for some reason, I was lingering in Joiner's room after Studio 60 and the leading story was about the nuclear testing in North Korea. Which is fine, whatever, do your bit of international news and then move on to the local accidents and police chases, blabbity blah blah. But then they started talking specifically about Kim Jong Il, and in the course of giving some basic information about the leader, they felt the need to pointn out that he is "a man of small stature," about "5 foot 3," with a "bouffant" and who is "a bit of a playboy."

I ask you: WTF? What other world leader gets described like this? Joiner said of the neat notebook graphics that accompanied this stunning piece of journalism: "It's like it's his online dating profile or something." If the piece were about the eccentricities of Kim Jong Il, I could understand bringing these characteristics up. But in a hard news piece about nuclear capability? The kindest explanation is that the reporters don't understand the line between hard news and feature news details; the worst is that this smacks of a kind of subtle racism where hey, it's okay to make fun of the little Asian man with the funny hair! We don't have to take him seriously or anything, because he's such a wee, funny little man!

I mean, do local news reports make fun of Fidel Castro's hair and beard when they report on Cuba? The only reason I am not more up in arms about this is that I have such a low opinion the quality of local news that I think they probably do.

Shut UP, local news.