Reporter Tired Of Pretending To Care What Rasheed Wallace Thinks

DETROIT --Lisa Saltzer, reporter for WFXT TV in Detroit , is growing tired of pretending to care what Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace thinks. The 36-year-old Saltzer graduated from Columbia University with a Master’s degree in communications and has been reduced to hanging on the every word of some overpaid, dim-witted jock.

“Oh, I am so sick of listening to that idiot babbling on about referee conspiracies,” said Saltzer, who appears every night on WFXT’s “SportsNight” with the latest Detroit Pistons news. “And I’m sick of his attitude. He treats us with such disdain. Imagine that? Him treating me with disdain? I went to Columbia University . I wanted to be an overseas correspondent for CNN. Now I’m stuck being shit on every night by a basketball player. Talk about humiliating. In an alternate universe, that guy’s bagging my groceries.”

Since joining the FXT news team two years ago, Saltzer has been degraded, dismissed, and verbally abused by many professional athletes. The most humiliating aspect of the job is that she needs the athletes more than they need her. “Some days I just want to tell these guys, especially Rasheed, to fuck off,” said Saltzer. “Unfortunately I desperately need quotes from them for my column and my TV appearances. So I have to chase them around like a little puppy dog. ‘Rasheed! Rasheed! Please! Just one moment of your time! Please!’ Then we he finally agrees I have to stand there in rapt attention like I’ve got an audience with the Pope. Of course I’m completely ignoring everything he says. Thank God for tape recorders.”

Last week, Saltzer was forced to track down Wallace after the Pistons Game 5 loss to the Miami Heat. As she stood with a throng of desperate reporters, Wallace delivered yet another mind-numbing diatribe about referee conspiracies.

“So we’re all standing there and ‘Sheed starts talking about how the refs are conspiring against the Pistons and trying to force a Game 7,” she said. “It was almost too much for me. I thought ‘This is it. Here comes my big nervous breakdown.’ Then I just took a deep breath, then another, then another. Soon I was transported to a fantasy world where I was in Paris interviewing Jacques Chirac about the European Union constitution—except for some reason Jacques Chirac kept saying ‘motherfucker.’”

Lately, Saltzer’s disdain for her job has been affecting her performance. In fact, her boss, “SportsNight” producer Roger Feldham, advised her to “take a few weeks off” after watching a tape of her performance at the Pistons-Heat playoff game. The tape was never broadcast, but it provided enough evidence to convince Feldham that his reporter was suffering from a case of burnout.

“Hello, this is Lisa Saltzer coming to you from American Airlines Arena,” said the weary, tired looking Saltzer on the discarded tape. “The Pistons suffered a loss against the Heat tonight and Rasheed Wallace has some choice words for the referees. Apparently he believes the league and the referees are conspiring to blah blah blah fucking blah. Does anyone really give a shit anymore? What is the point of all this? It’s all meaningless. Let me sum up for you: Rasheed is God and everyone else is a big, useless piece of shit. There. Now can I go home? I’ve got six Vicodin and a bottle of Southern Comfort waiting for me. Back to you, Ken!”

Said Feldham: “When I saw that I knew immediately that Lisa was suffering from a classic case of burnout. I’ve seen it a million times. It’s most common in people like Lisa, who were once idealistic young go-getters with aspirations to do really important work. When she left college, I’m sure she imagined being an international journalist who traveled to exotic lands and put herself in death defying situations in search of a good scoop. Now she’s being paid $48,000 dollars a year to hang out in smelly locker rooms with a bunch of college drop-outs. It’s a tough adjustment to make, but she’ll be fine once she learns to abandon all her hopes and dreams.”

Feldham said he expects Saltzer to return from her hiatus in time for the start of NFL training camp, where she can travel to the exotic locale of Allen Park, MI to cover the 2005 Detroit Lions.