Media Morons

Well, Hurricane Gustav has come and gone. What a wide variety of coverage of this storm there has been over the past 48 hours. Big Fat Michael Moore stated that God hates the Republicans and that is why Gustav was bearing down on New Orleans on the eve of the Republican Convention. Hey Mike, since when did you start believing in God? Worry less about Sarah Palin and more about your waistline.

One thing I feel needs to be addressed is how those in the know, "media types", reporters, reporter-ettes, etc, constantly will feed all of us lemmings on how we are supposed to behave during the time of the storm. Evacuate. If you stay behind, secure your property, stay inside, hunker down, wait for word from local officials. Hmm. I've always wondered what actually constituted a "hunker", is that a huddle, is that the crash position from the airline instruction, is that a huddle in the supposed bunker we all are supposed to have? There should be a Congressional law passed to ban the use of the word Hunker Down, during hurricane season.

Well, as in almost every facet of our lives, the media reporters and reporter-ettes felt compelled to go out in the elements to show those of us hunkering down to display the fury of Gustav.
You could almost sense a feeling of disappointment of many reporters that the damage wasn't worse than it was. The evacuation was well planned and very well executed. There was no levee breaches, no massive flooding in downtown New Orleans. It's interesting as the NHC always says never focus on the thin line of the forecast track, but look at the area which can be affected.
The media didn't follow their own advice given to us lemmings and harbored the bigwigs of all the networks right on Canal St in the French Quarter. They were all waiting, waiting, and waiting for the floods, looting, massive ruination all around. Instead we saw a few signs blowing around, a few trees down, and a street light or two blown down.

Viewers of every network on Monday morning were treated to see some moron or another standing in tropical storm force winds, dressed in the latest foul weather gear from LL Bean, looking like they were ready to scale Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary, explaining how bad the rain bands are. Then you'd see three normally dressed folks walk right behind them on camera down the street or beach. The reporters would complain about how bad the sand was pelting them, or they can't see. Simple answer morons, get out of the weather. Prior to Gustav, Jim Cantore basically leveled a death sentence on shrimpers who stayed on their vessels near Houma.

The most irresponsible reporting I saw during this storm was by Geraldo Rivera. Surprise? Still looking for something in Capone's vault? Rivera decided he was going to go to the Industrial Canal Levee in the height of the storm and walk right up to it, climb on the levee and make his camera man follow him to get film footage. You could tell the camera man wasn't crazy about this idea as Geraldo keeps yelling at him, giving him directions. After watching this, I compared Geraldos' behavior to the man who was seriously injured while kite surfing in Miami in advance of TS Fay. The kite surfer was in critical condition after his accident and his video made almost every media outlet and reporters comments were all surrounding how foolish his behavior was.
However, if the levee had failed in the foolhardy action taken yesterday by Geraldo and his cameraman would have been killed, these two would have been held up in media glory about 2 individuals which perished while bringing the news to the world. Media folks think the mass public can't think for themselves.

Here in Lee County, there has been local flooding as a result of sheetflow after TS Fay. The local reporter-ettes have been dispatched to cover the flooding story in Bonita Springs. For some reason, local reporters always feel the need to stand in ankle deep water, wearing hip waders, and report to viewers the need to stay out of flood waters. Let's hope Darwin and natural selection might take effect.