You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Storm Coverage.
It’s predictable. It’s tired. It’s mundane.
Hurricane Isaac is on its way to Louisiana, to once again blow up the Gulf Coast.
Is it Katrina? Everyone remembers Katrina? Will it ravage the city of New Orleans?
The predictions are wild and thought through as readily as a blonde drinking Jeigermeister.
I see Sam Champion standing by the storm surge. I see Ginger Zee frantically warning me that the surf behind her is dangerously large.
Reporters are standing in full body condoms in rivers and camp grounds and ocean waves.
I’ve seen this all before.
Why?
Because it is the only calamity that news directors can plan for.
News stations across the southeast are scuttling satellite trucks to the best possible vantage points.
These mastodons of news will hunker down behind buildings and walls and beam their signals into space.
The talking heads in the studios will talk of levys and pumping stations and flood planes.
Bug eyed, soaked to the bone field correspondents will utter sentences that contain phrases like “serious situation” and “frightening scenarios” and “extreme flooding”
You will hear these words over and over and over, perhaps a thousand times in the next 24 hours.
Reporters will fill quad boxes on your screen while a swirling orange and purple and pink storm track reminds us that hurricanes are brought to us by the cartoon network.
Reporters will stand by trees and signs and on the side of jetties. We will watch them scream through howling, coyote piercing winds while rain and wind pound them in the heads.
Some of these bellowing broadcasters will wear hoods and goggles. Others will wear hats and still others will wear Cardigans and golf shirts as if this is their first day on the job.
Regardless they will all scream into big screened microphones and tell me that hell is churning in the gulf.
And you know what? They are right. And we’ve seen it all before.
One gust of darkness looks like another gust of darkness. The rain blowing sideways, the white caps, the evacuation shelters. It’s as predictable as methane in a dairy farm.
Don’t get me wrong, it is important to listen to the reports and take precautions if you live in the path of the storm.
But to watch the weather channel or MSNBC or Fox News for more than a few minutes is the equivalent of Ambien.
Will it be a repeat of Hurricane Katrina. Will people die? Will dogs be left to stand on roof tops, barking at news helicopters that fly by holding signs that say help in huge red letters?
We all pray not.
Sometimes I wish a news gatherer would get banged up. I don’t want anyone killed or maimed. I don’t want them to lose an eye or a tooth or pull a testicle. I think I am wishing for them to just get knocked in the head with a light weight foreclosure sign.
I wish this so news directors will think twice before ordering another live truck into devastation. I wish this so a news director is forced to explain to the family of an injured camera crew why he sent their loved ones into a blustery veil of uncertainty.
I have stood in a hurricane where raindrops hit your face like painful pellets of death. I can tell you it is scary, and honestly, I’m not sure it is worth the risk.
And that’s the difference. Young people stand in the danger zones. They are full of guts and inexperience.
News directors know better. They sit at their warm desks with their feet up and critique loudly when audio lines pop and lights go dark.
Just once, I’d like to see a news director stand in the storm blender, to face the category 2 of hell to man up and kiss the unknown blowing in from the Gulf.
I doubt we will soon see that.
So stand tall Gulf Coast. Hunker down. Stock pile water and and board up those windows.
Tomorrow the sun will shine and the clean up will begin.
And you know what, we’ve seen that all before too.
And that is crazy.™