What am I missing here?

Today's episode of Little Miss Know-it-All: I'm standing here with...HAHAHAHAHA!!!

In the past six months or so, my humour-impaired readers have either developed a sense of humour or decided to stop asking me if I am serious all the time. I am not sure which it is, but I suspect that they are still afflicted with this pernicious ailment and have simply gotten to know me a bit better by reading this blog. Also, they don't like it when I make fun of them, because, as I mentioned earlier, they are humour impaired.

I am making a direct appeal to those readers today.

What...the hell...is funny about this video? I don't get it. What is it that makes you crumple into tears of laughter? Why is this video viral on YouTube?

I found out about this through The Washington Post, which called this video "a 17-second masterpiece of comic triviality". Hmmm. I don't get it. Where's the humour?

Turtle Boy is apparently hilarious, but to me it just looks like another live hit on a local news program. It goes on every day. Don't these people watch the news?

This sort of thing happens when an event is scheduled during the newscast. I don't mean that the event organizers planned to hold it as the same time as the local news; usually they didn't even think about the timing. It's a local fair, a concert, a sale at Reitman's...really, it doesn't matter what it is. The news producer decides to cover it -- while it's still happening! How exciting! Talk about live and late-breaking!

A live hit requires a small crew at the site: the reporter, the camera guy, and a techie to get the feed to the studio at just the right time. Although the techie usually does a great job of linking the reporter to the studio, the timing of the event is usually off: it's unlikely that anything exciting will actually happen during the minute or so that the group will be broadcasting live. In fact, the point of a live hit is not to show something exciting that's happening. Anything exciting should be filmed and used in a packaged story. God forbid something would happen during the live hit -- some moron reporter would be talking over the real news! I can picture it now: "And the atomic bomb is about to drop over Hiroshima. Our sources say it should be any minute now. Well, it's not happening yet, so let me tell you more about it. A single weapon can destroy an entire city. This will be the first time this type of weapon has ever been used. This is historic stuff, folks. What's that? Oh, our sources are telling us the bomb has just been dropped. See that mushroom cloud?"

So it's up to the reporter to "wrangle a guest" to be interviewed. It could be the event organizer, a local celebrity, or a cute kid. The point of the interview is not to provide any real information to the public, it's to remind the audience that the news crew is RIGHT THERE. Usually, the guest says nothing of any value. Often, he will freeze -- this is live TV, after all -- and say something really dumb that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Like "I like turtles".

Can someone explain to me why this clip is funnier than the stuff that airs every night of the week? I just don't get it.