I watched the evening news for the first time in a long while last night. One of the top stories was the winter weather affecting the south. The reporter droned on about all the calamity taking place due to the ice and snow.
He said the storm left “three hundred thousand people without power.” Wow, you say. Three hundred thousand sounds like a large amount of people, right? It does, that is, until you realize it’s the total from the entire south, home to multiple millions of people. Heck, you could probably find 300,000 people living without power right now in the south, and not because of any storm.
Another thing that ticked me off was the sensationalist images they showed on TV. Now, this storm hit over a weekend, meaning most people were already safe at home. And the truth is, most people stayed at home! We’ve had such misfortune of lousy winter weather lately that only an idiot wouldn’t take it seriously by now.
So, who gets shown on the TV news? The idiots, of course!! See, Martha? There they are, skidding their cars down some iced-over hill, a gift for the snickering, waiting cameramen. The handful of poor bastards with no sense to stay off the roads make the many thousands of wiser people look bad. The rest of the country sees us and thinks “oh those poor country bumpkins…”
Now I know that the TV news wants eye-catching images to keep people glued to their sets. But these clips are almost always an aberration. Is it REALLY too much to ask for one shot of a family playing inside at home, gathered around a fireplace, or sledding in the street? Sure, it’s not as exciting as a car wreck, but it’s far closer to the truth.
The whole topic touches on a topic that I’ve had brewing for at least a month now. I’ve been putting off writing about it because I want to give it the attention it truly deserves. Last month, it dawned on me how much American society is driven by fear.
I’ll save the full-blown post for another night, but chew on that for a while. In the meantime, I’ll think I’ll continue to leave my TV set off.