Yes, I speak to you of Main Stream News. Stream? you ask. You just said they were crossing a river. Streams aren't a big as rivers. Well, I'm not the one that invented the expression "mainstream." So I'll take my poetic license and call them Main Styx Media. As usual, I am astonished beyond words at them.
Having abandoned their former homes of news reporting for the shallows of pure propaganda, when news comes along they seem to be confused.
I suppose no one noticed the reporting by national "news", for lack of a better word. News? Was there news? Oh, there was a Category 4 hurricane, Hurricane Harvey. Yesterday as the hurricane tore up Texas, MSM spent their time reviling the President. I suppose they were already huddled somewhere spinning their big story about how he caused the hurricane to hit Texas instead of Mexico, where no one would be harmed, since the Mexicans had moved to the US. How Gramma Neeny had to flee to the attic and then sit on what was left of the roof. All our President's fault. Oh, did he commit a faux pas too? Is he insane? We just need someone slicker than him, don't we?
What did they not do? Well, suppose you were me trying to learn the projected path of the storm, the barometric pressure, the wind speeds and such, there was no mention of these anywhere anytime. While MSM did due diligence and reported Friday evening that the hurricane had made landfall at Rockport, Texas, having said that, they packed up and went home for the weekend.
On Saturday I looked high and low for reports on what location the eye of the storm was. They didn't seem not know. Or care. They seemed to imagine that being somewhere in Texas was enough. The area is "uninhabited." Oh, except for a few cowpokes. That is a word the dear souls in New York City, where the news is broadcasted from, like to use to describe places of 150,000 people.
But what did it matter?? At 3:00 o'clock CNN announced, when they found a minute, that the hurricane had gone inland and was no longer hurricane force. The winds were 73 mph, making it a tropical storm. Wow!! Isn't that wonderful? Hurricane force winds are defined as 74 mph!! Isn't it considerate of the storm to be one mph less than that? Then they declared the storm to be over. YAY!! JUST IN TIME FOR HAPPY HOUR!! they cried.
Uh ho. The "tropical storm", which was still spinning at exactly 73 mph Sunday, had found Houston, our fourth largest city, where a whole lot of cowpokes live. In terrified voices they spoke of the flooding catastrophe, which somehow they had figured out was the bigger threat. Why is Houston the city of 2.3 million and not Galveston? Oh, wasn't there a Category 4 hurricane there in 1900 that washed 12,000 people out to sea to drown? Wasn't that when the people that were left moved inland to Houston?
Still no word of where the eye of the storm actually is. They figured out that there were a whole lot of tornados associated with the storm. No projection of where Tropical Storm Harvey might be heading. Oh so what? Well, they didn't tell Houston to evacuate before it flooded, being still quite close to the Gulf of Mexico, and rain pouring endlessly. Now it was too late and they spent their time warning them not to evacuate while they looked for human interest stories about the plight of Gramma Neeny.
Did they warn others to evacuate, like possibly Lake Charles, Louisiana? It's always a good idea to avoid the rush.
Was there any discussion of the nuclear plants sitting on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and how they were faring as the hurricane hit them directly? I heard one mention. There was a nuclear plant but it's fine. End of story. Wait. That's exactly the story I heard about Fukushima...
And what else is in eastern Texas and southern Louisiana? Oil refineries? Is that a problem? Maybe they could spin that as an environmental disaster. Hey, maybe this storm will go back out to the Gulf of Mexico and strengthen and hit New Orleans. Then they could resurrect Hurricane Katrina footage when they were tired of reporting the news.
So I give up. You can't fight airheads. There are too many of them.
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