From North Carolina to Pennsylvania, Hurricane Irene appeared to have fallen short of the doomsday predictions… Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell had initially warned that Irene could be a “catastrophic” monster with record storm surges of up to 8 feet.
(‘Little damage seen…’, Associated Press, August 28, 2011)
No shit. Now we’re being treated to the perverse spectacle of watching the politicians and reporters who hyped those predictions hem and haw – with a palpable note of disappointment – about how “we dodged a bullet.”
Except that the only bullets that were fired along Irene’s path were the blanks of sound and fury signifying nothing that came out of their mouths. By contrast, here in part is why I cannot resist this occasion to say, I told you so:
News outlets cover natural disasters purportedly as a public service. But there’s no denying that such coverage is a ratings boon for their bottom line – catering as it does to the perverse thrill of suspense that keeps us fixated on the hype of impending doom….
Am I the only one who figures that if Irene at Cat 3 did not wash away the tiny islands of the Caribbean, then Irene at Cat 1 is hardly likely to wash away the big island of Manhattan?!
(The hyping of Hurricane Irene, The iPINIONS Journal, August 26, 2011)
As it turned out, Irene was not even a Cat 1 as she passed over Manhattan, leaving none of the dreaded destruction in her wake that had Mayor Michael Bloomberg preparing New York City for her wrath as if he were Napoleon Bonaparte preparing Paris for the invasion of the Austrian, Russian and Prussian armies.
Indeed, this much ado about nothing was punctuated by the fact that instead of causing “catastrophic” damage as the governor of Virginia predicted, Irene did not even surge the Potomac into the streets of Old Town Alexandria, which happens almost every year during the rainy season in this area of Northern Virginia….
Like I said, falling trees, power outages, and flash flooding were all to be expected. But this hardly warranted the Irene hysteria given that vast areas of the United States experience these naturally occurring phenomena every year. As I suggested would be the case, last year’s floods in Tennessee, including the flooding of the Grand Ole Opry, caused far more damage than anything that can be attributed to Irene.
Meanwhile, watching hype-meister Al Rocker of NBC wax hopeful about Irene’s impending doom became almost as farcical as watching Geraldo Rivera wax hopeful about what treasures would be found in Al Capone’s vault.
Not to mention the unbridled contrivance of some no-name reporter from FOX News covering himself in sea foam just to vindicate the hype by giving the appearances of devastation that never came.
But oh what a ratings boon this was for news outlets. To spare us next time, however, I urge all of you with Twitter and Facebook accounts to chastise your local stations for wasting so much TV time following reporters on scavenger hunts for damage or otherwise featuring news anchors and weather boys and girls repeating themselves ad nauseam. These purveyors of manufactured doom even preempted coverage of the World Track and Field Championships for Christ’s sake!
The storm left millions without power across much of the Eastern Seaboard, left more than 20 dead, and forced airlines to cancel about 9,000 flights. [But] it never became the big-city nightmare forecasters and public officials had warned about.
(‘Irene: wet, deadly and expensive, but no monster,’ Associated Press, August 28, 2011)
That said, I have no doubt that one of these days their doomsday predictions (or self-fulfilling prophecies) about hurricane damage will come true. Alas, I also have no doubt that that will be the occasion when nobody heeds a word they say: Cassandra!
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Hyping of Irene
* This commentary was originally published on yesterday (Sunday) afternoon at 12:29