Imagine my shocking surprise when I logged on to The Daily Slime in Salisbury to find the following headline under "Breaking News":

Patient Jumps from Window at PRMC

At first I thought, "Wow, so that's why I didn't hear from Dad today."  I would imagine that his day was pretty busy after such an event.  After all, just reading the lead in the article was pretty disturbing:

SALISBURY — A patient in Peninsula Regional Medical Center’s psychiatric wing broke the third-floor window of his suite at about 8 p.m. and jumped.

I am thinking "Holy shit.  I'll bet he had a really bad day."  Not only is it a bad thing when a patient decides to depart this life, but those windows aren't cheap either.  And I can only imagine the mess that would make.

Of course, then I clicked on "more", and I find out that the news really isn't as sensational as Joe Carmean (the article writer) and Greg Basset (Editor-in-Moron) wants you to believe.

Turns out, the loon fashioned a rope out of his bedsheet, climbed out, jumped on the second floor roof, then down to the ground. In fact, they later found him hiding "deep in the basement" of the unfinished Layfield Tower.  (Note: It's the Eastern Shore, folks.  Yes, I know the basement is pretty big in the Layfield Tower, mainly for the new mechanical systems, but "deep"?  It's not like the search teams needed to pressurize themselves in a diving bell.  In 1992, I toured a large portion of Anatolian Turkey.  They have underground cities in Cappadocia and Goreme that go down 170 feet.  THAT IS DEEP.)

It seems to me that Greg Bassett and his band of headline writers/mayoral sycophants/Gilchrest spouses over there across the street at The Daily Slime decided to overstate the story to grab eyeballs.  Guess what? It worked, you got my attention all the way up here in Maryland Line.  Guess what?  Only works once.  See "boy, wolf, cried". (If you have never read the story, let me jump to the end.  Third time boy cries wolf, wolf eats boy.  Town ignores boy.  Boy is wolf poop now.)

Salisbury and the entire lower shore suffers from the lack of a credible, quality news source, and Greg Bassett did nothing to help that problem.  I once said that The Daily Slime wasn't fit to pick crabs on, much less line a bird cage with, and Bassett only confirms that with his Albero-esque headlines.  The Daily Slime masthead should read "All the Hype to Suck You In To Read Our Crappy Reporters' Drivel".  That the article has NO quotes from anyone in EMS, the Salisbury Police, the hospital's own outstanding security force*, or even Donna Richardson tells you how hard Joe Carmean went to actually gather a few important facts and statements.  Did he write the entire thing in front of a word processor based on the scanner talk?

The Daily Slime needs a little Joe Friday over there on Carroll Street-- "just the facts ma'am" -- and a whole lot less sensationalism.

(Note: This post was written entirely from information contained in The Daily Slime.  Not a single employee of Peninsula Regional Medical Center, the medical staff, its subsidiaries or affiliates was even contacted for comment at the time this post was composed.  Although I am sure I will hear about it in the morning.  Sorry, Dad.)

* They have a guy on their staff who is like eight feet tall.  He's got longer arms than a giant squid.  If you try to run from this guy, you have run like 50 feet and he has only turned on his pivot foot and he's got you by the collar.  The first time I met him, he made me feel really small, and I have a bird's eye view of most bald spots.