Robot Schmobot

Yesterday, several news sites reported that a man was shot by a robot. Headlines like this, conjuring images of Cylon toasters mowing down Colonial civilians, will certainly get a few readers. The sad truth, though, is that an old man killed himself.

Apparently, an 81 year-old man in Australia was distraught because his family was pressuring him to move into a nursing home. He decided to kill himself instead. He found plans on the Internet for a machine that could pull the trigger of a handgun remotely. He built the machine, set it up in his driveway, and killed himself with it.

I haven’t seen this machine, but calling it a robot is cheerless sensationalism, given that it was probably made from a power drill and a vice. Leave it to Fox News, though, to go over the top. I’m not making this up. This is their headline:

Australian Man Gunned Down
in Driveway by Killer Robot

Do these idiots really want to parody themselves? If Fox News were on the Comedy Channel, along with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, they would be pretty funny. But they're not, and they are always making up slogans claiming impartiality. Their latest is this: We Report. You Decide. OK—I’ve decided. I’ve decided that Fox News is a bunch of assholes.