As your average landlocked citizen, I watched in awe the massive power of Hurricane Frances as it played on my TV screen.
Over. and over. and over. Again.
Last night I watched Jim Cantore just about cry when he talked about how bad he felt that he was using a hotel room when there were so many people around him desperate for a place to stay after losing their homes.
I found myself yelling back at the screen: “Go home, Jim!”
Your house is fine. It’s probably really nice. Let these poor people get a nights sleep, for goodness sake. All you’re doing is making reports every twenty minutes. “later we expect the winds to pick up.” “It’s getting really windy.” “It’s really, really windy now.” “Any minute now, we expect hurricane force winds.” “Holy shit! There are hurricane force winds!” “well, twenty minutes ago we had hurricane force winds, it’s a little less windy now.” “Boy, those were some big winds we had.”
Do you see what I’m saying? He’s not doing anything other than stating the obvious and taking up precious oxygen, not to mention a hotel room. Couldn’t one of the other 1,972 reporters do exactly the same thing?
I am not making light of how bad the storm is. I know it is bad. We all know it is bad. They’ve been warning us about big hurricanes for a hundred years. But do we need these fools standing in the wind, holding on to lamp posts and screaming into a microphone? What, exactly, does this do for the people of Florida (who couldn’t watch if they wanted to since their power was/is out)? CNN even has a montage of some of the more foolish as they are about to be blown away, or not, by the storm.
That said, I really need some coffee…
I want to add that Jim is one of my heros, on my list of “people I would like to buy a beer just so we can chat for a few minutes.” I just can’t believe that he needs to be in the hotel in the disaster area so that he can show me fallen down trees and talk about the wind. Pick up a hammer and do something if you’re gonna be in the way.
