I am disgusted with the Toronto Star this morning.

(OT tangent warning ... What an age we live in! Here I am, sitting at my desk on an island in the Indian Ocean, about to write about being ticked off over something I've seen in a Canadian newspaper, and sharing my irritation with you ... you being almost exclusively a person half the world away from the aforementioned desk. Cool ... )

I wrote yesterday about an AP report on India's lame attempt to placate the rest of the world and stop the clamoring about the horrendous practice of female infanticide that sees millions of baby girls removed from the equation that is life, by announcing a plan to build a bunch of orphanages for the 'unwanted girls'.

The Toronto Star picked up the story ... actually, they did nothing more than cut and paste it ... but came up with their own headline:

India Launches Bid to Save Baby Girls

Excuse me?

Is missing the point an international pastime this week?

Well, of course it is ... this week and every week, because it's so darned easy.

Given the roots of this problem that is as much a holocaust as any in history, a simple finger-snap 'solution' seems a tidy way to back-burner issues of gender imbalance, yet again.

After all, who would want to take on extreme cultural bias, a crippling dowry system, crushing poverty, the inequity of resources, religiously proscribed patriarchy, and so many other sacred cows?

Apparently not news organizations, at least not when it's ever so much lazier ... oops, and to think I tried to write 'easier' ... to take a pre-chewed bit of pap, then spit it out for further consumption without ever needing to digest a single bit of the topic at hand.

Of course, when your staff is working overtime to spin the death of Anna Nicole Smith, great humanitarian and world leader that she was, and other such stories of vital interest to global peace and harmony, what's a news organization to do?

If you'd like to send a letter to the Star explaining that snappy headlines do not a newspaper make, here's the link to their opinion page.