Verdict: people from Alabama are stupid

So this Alabama dude cashed 1,308,459 pennies he'd been saving for 38 years, setting a new record for those Coinstar machines at grocery stores.

Now, I have a problem with the way CNN.com is reporting this. The article is titled 1.3M penny collection turns into jackpot. Jackpot? He didn't win shit! He already had $13,000 sitting in his house. "New found wealth"? Do these people not realize that pennies are perfectly good currency? Those pennies have always been worth $13,084.59!

So he had all this cash taking up valuable space in his house, not accumulating interest and just asking to be stolen or lost to flooding or tornado or whatever they have down in Alabama. When you take inflation into account, you're losing money if you're not putting your money in a savings account.

What makes this story dumber is that. He went to frickin' Coinstar, where they charge 8 cents on every dollar, which in this case amounts to $1,086.72. For that much money, he could've flown to NYC and hit a Commerce Bank Penny Arcade like Cranky Andy Rooney and still have enough money left over for a hot dog.

I don't know, maybe I should just expect that kind of stupidity [red state insult deleted]. But should CNN.com and other media outlets be celebrating this type of silliness? Where is the critical thinking? Where are the hard questions? Sadly, this is probably about the best we can expect from the corporate owned media. Independent thought is for homos and terrorists.