Irritated
While a million people in Washington and Oregon are suffering the effects of last week's hurricane (Yes, I know it's not officially a hurricane, but the physical reality is identical) the media are still telling the story ONLY in terms of those three idiot climbers on Mount Hood. While hundreds of houses are damaged or destroyed, while a million people are still without power, the only thing that matters is how the weather will affect those three idiots.

What makes this especially peculiar is that the networks are ignoring the human-interest stories that would normally be the center of their coverage. This clip from KING-TV in Seattle, for instance. A rather sweet family of Somali immigrants, unaccustomed to urban living and certainly unaccustomed to cold weather, used a hibachi grill to cook their food when the electricity went out, and ended up with carbon monoxide poisoning. Luckily they all survived.

Ordinarily, the networks would take this story and run with it: Where is the Federal Government? Why does Cowboy Bush hate these Mohammedan immigrants so much that he doesn't fly directly to their apartment and help them? Nope, we don't hear any of that junk. None of the usual concern for poor people, which might actually be appropriate here. Nope, it's all about those three rich dickheads who put themselves into a position of risk, and all about how our military is wasting its resources to rescue them. Except that the stories are not calling it a waste of resources; if anything they are wishing for even more military waste.

[Incidentally, I didn't lose power or suffer serious property damage this time, thank heaven. For some reason this part of Spokane wasn't affected as badly as other areas. In most storms it's the other way around.]

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Update on Monday: Fox's Shep Smith, bless his syntactically peculiar heart, is finally giving some decent attention to the 'powerless masses' in Seattle.
  ¶ 11:22 AM