I am a habitual watcher of the news and have seen the media over cover events in the past but the coverage of Hurricane Irene is like 4 cans of Cheese Whiz on a Ritz cracker. I can’t tell you how bad I want to put on my Helly Hansons and find one of these reporters and toss them off the pier. Don’t stand there in your Weather Channel poncho and tell me that going out is akin to crossing 100 meters of enfilade fire, if it’s that dangerous get your crew in the studio and tell us about the storm. I just watched this guy on MSNBC tell me how incredulous he is that people are out risking their lives to save folks who venture out into the maelstrom when the oar flung out of the rowboat by Irene is most likely to hit the cluster of talking heads and camera guys on every street corner from Nags Head to Caribou.
Oh, and when you scare the children with stories of Cat 4 storms coming onto Long Island, and tell us how unbelievable hideous that a Cat 4 would be, then tell me Catagories don’t matter much and it’s the size of the storm, the storm surge, the pants the storm is wearing, that really tells the story, you shoot your own credibility. Of course if your job is to pump the storm like a carnival barker regardless of the actual impact your cred is kinda limp to begin with. And re-emphasizing that if you’re on the tenth floor it’s like one Cat higher just makes me want to go back in time and prevent your grandparents from meeting.
CNBC is interrupting the usual Sunday Pot and Porn Docusnoozefests with the undoubtedly riveting financial impact report on the storm beginning at 0600 tomorrow. Really, 6 a.m.! If the first sentence isn’t the expense of the overreaction due to the media frenzy, I’m throwing a brick thru the TV and switching to Bloomberg on my laptop for life.
I can only imagine the indignation at The Weather Channel when they read comments like this, but these are the same people who’s opinion of our collective IQ’s is reflected by their belief we’ll only get the message about a storm if the reporters hair is wet. All the bombast only assures that when the storm doesn’t live up to their slobbered predictions the numbskulls among us will venture out into the teeth of the next one.
A quick aside. To all media folks, and the public officials who have urged folks off barrier beaches and other high risk locations. Shut up. Anyone requiring your advice to make wise or even sensible decisions is unlikely to be taking a break from finding a cancer cure or advancing the state of the art in physics to be at the end of the dock or on the beach. As I tweeted to Gov. Christie, if these knuckleheads are bucking for a Darwin Award, I say let them have their shot at it.
