“On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.”Okay, duh, cool, whatever. Nothing uber-surprising here. And the statement is pretty self-explantory.
But, of course it got me thinking about US news media vs. the rest of the world. I was in London when the Michael Jackson child molestation case verdict was announced (June 2005) and I'll never forget the BBC reporter commenting on the media circus that was the Jackson case and how weird it was for him as a British reporter to be covering a trial on a minute-by-minute basis throughout the life of the trial. And yet, of course, how normal this was for Americans. Of course he said it with a much more eloquent and pointed statement (and in a fantastic accent), but was an interesting remark of how Americans would be outraged if we didn't get the blow-by-blow of every celebrity court case. Because, as a country, we're retarded.
So on the topic of ridiculous news media coverage, the lovely little frenzy that's been going on for the past week over TS Ernesto has been complete baloney. I mean really, Ernesto was a tropical storm, then a cat 1 hurricane, then a tropical storm and now it's a tropical depression. For those of you who've never been in a cat 1-2 hurricane or tropical storm, basically it's a rainy day with a little wind. I've been in storms with stronger winds and more rain and flooding in the middle of Illinois several times every summer. We just don't have a name for those storms. Anyhoot, I digress. So Ernesto happens to come around on the 1 year anniversary of Katrina, although by no means do the storms even begin to compare. And since it's been a boring and quiet hurricane season thus far -- especially compared to last year, when by this point we'd had 11 storms, 3 of which were cat 4-5-- and the news media and meterologists need to ensure their own job security, we have some ridiculous nonsense tracking a tropical storm and making crazy statements about how it could ruin Miami. Really, WTF, mate?
Meanwhile, in other hurricane news. John - the "other" storm - is making landfall as a category 4 hurricane. I have no idea how this feel 4 whole news stories behind Ernesto today (yes, Ernesto was story #2 and John was #6). I guess it must be since we don't care about Mexico or southern California. Whatever, I still recommend we sell Florida.*
Do I hear 5 pesos, Cuba?
* more on this campaign platform and how it will one day win me the Supreme Ruler of the Universe election to come soon
