Julie Tristan, of KSDK and previously of 101 The River fame, got a little attention over the weekend after sports blog Deadspin took shots at her David Freese interview. Essentially, Deadspin used the piece in which Tristan rides Six Flags’ “Mr. Freeze” ride with the Cardinal third baseman and playfully hits on him with her friend, as an example of what is wrong with all local new media.

Here’s a link to the KSDK video in question. We’re not going to embed it below because it auto-plays, and that kind of crap is worse than raping bunnies with hot pokers (yet another issue with local media that Deadspin didn’t mention). Here’s what Deadspin had to say.

Here is World Series MVP David Freese being subjected to quite possibly the most uncomfortably awkward fluff piece ever. Six Flags has a Mr. Freeze roller coaster and Show Me St. Louis’ Julie Tristan decided it would be the perfect excuse to continually hit on the young Cardinal. She even brought in an assistant. Just…watch and feel embarrassed for every single person involved in this mess.

They aren’t wrong. This is pretty horrible for all the ways they mention, and for a few they didn’t. The only reason why it’s not shockingly bad to us, is because it’s freaking “Show Me St. Louis” and every single thing on that program is crap like this. When looking at this through the lens of “news program” is would make us upset right along side Deadspin, but what they don’t know is that “Show Me St. Louis” might as well be a freaking infomercial. What was the point of the “interview”? Answer: There wasn’t one. The point was to make an advertisement for Six Flags feel cool by connecting Mr. Freese to Mr. Freeze. That’s it. [Update: Turns out Freese appeared to raise awareness for Big Brothers and Big Sisters. Want to know why we didn’t realize that until now? …because Tristan doesn’t mention it…or maybe she did mention it and we couldn’t hear it over her hormones.]

…and ok, maybe Tristan took the gag a little too far. Seriously, why was there another random girl there? Blondes vs brunettes? “Do you think we’re pretty?” Rosie O’Donnell tried this bit already with Tom Cruise in the 90s…she eventually gave up on it…or admitted to giving up on “it” a while back…or was born that way (and presumably with that short hair cut she keeps trying to make work)…whatever, not the point.

Julie’s a nice person based on friends of friends and brief encounters, and she was hired to make commercials in to fluff, which she does, so tweets like the above calling out her professionalism miss the mark. The real problem here is that KSDK has the nerve to call it “news”, and that’s the really horrible thing that went down. (Ok, and it was pretty awkward.)

…also, are we really still doing the “5 is 1” hand motion?! Do we really think that’s gonna catch on one day? You’re a freaking local news channel and there is no expectation of allegiance. It’s just really dumb. Please stop asking people do it on camera. In fact, it was pretty clear Freese was doing it ironically.

[Another Update: A good point was brought up by Yahoo!’s Kevin Kaduk: What if this was a man doing this schtick to a girl athlete?]

via Deadspin