Weather stories and news priorities in general

Look, I'm not particularly callous, not a mean-spirited American, but what's this with a Florida hurricane story (the latest one) dominating the news? Even the PBS report on TV this evening. A full first segment, talking about the dangers of standing water after the storm, leading to an increase of mosquito bites, absence of refrigeration in people's homes, and so forth. Cleanup will cost $2 billion, the storm took the lives of some trailer-dwellers, maybe 10.

Meanwhile, in the nations we've recently invaded (there are two, recall: Afghanistan and Iraq) $2 billions are spent every week, and scores of deaths, theirs and ours, occur. And--if I need to add this, as I apparently do--these deaths and expenditures are fully as colorful as those of Floridians, certainly as newsworthy in any sensible historical sense. I mean, weather happens, but wars are declared. Weather passes, wars change everything.

And a second segment on PBS devoted (interminably) to Clinton's surgery? Give me a break. He ate too many burgers, he had chest pains, he had surgery. Enough. He's a political eunuch, not much of a president at all events (recall, Clinton sold out the Democratic Party, wrecked it for salvation except through revolution--about which more in a later post, I'm certain). The surgeon on PBS, interviewed at boring length, called his surgery "enormously common."

So, we're two-fifths through "today's news" on PBS and all we know is that Florida is okay and so is Clinton, neither of which stories deserve more than a minute. And (I waited to the end of the PBS report to tell you this) nary a mention of the seven Marines and two Army grunts who died in Iraq today, nor of the scores who died there. And this, I must remind you, is PBS.

And so it goes in America.