It’s hard to admit, but U2 playing Carter-Finley stadium this weekend was a BIG DEAL: before & after news coverage, blogs and Twitter updates blowing up like Glenn Beck misspelled “oligarchy” again or something.

Did you know there was a hidden story to the concert? It wasn’t Bono’s concert shout-out to Jesse Helms and John Edwards. No, in America’s smartest city, a couple was denied entry to see their favorite Irishmen because of goddamn motherfucking PARKING.

Capitalizing on the bizarre “Obama effect” trend of Americans blaming public officials for all of life’s problems, WRAL reports the sob story of would-be concertgoer Carrie White, who missed U2 because of traffic:

“We were really disappointed,” concertgoer Carrie White said.

White spent $250 on U2 360° tour tickets for her husband’s birthday. She said they were stuck in traffic for three hours, and were then told no parking was available.

A “key” to this whole “objective reporting” thing is to get “both” sides of the story, so let’s hear from the state Highway Patrol first:

The state Highway Patrol said the traffic congestion was not due to poor planning, but rather too many people trying to come to the concert all at once.

One could mention that the Highway Patrol has managed larger crowds on previous Saturdays for NCSU football without incident, but that would imply wasted First-Year College students navigate the area better than affluent suburbanites (some of whom were “smart” enough to shell out $250 for U2), and that’s not gonna get the page views.

No, if you’re WRAL, your strategy is to cherry-pick comments from your own forum, insert them into your news story, and then link to said forum so other dumbasses who didn’t plan ahead can come in and vent about the story you manufactured.

There’s some comment high/low-lights below. Check out these products of divorce playing the victim:

Too bad some other dinosaur band wrote “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” It would have sounded great Saturday on the world’s smallest violin.

[WRAL] Traffic problems cause some people to miss U2 concert

[N&O]Stuck in a moment…

pic via N&O