Al Gore's
Inconvenient Truth doesn't just infer that flooding has increased due to global warming. The film
literally states that flooding in the Northeast has increased dramatically in recent years.
So what happens over the past month while rainstorms park themselves over the east coast, snarl traffic, flood homes, delay flights and cause mayhem?
Our sackless media refuses to even raise the question of whether this ties to a movie currently playing in local theaters that predicts this exact result.
How sackless? Very sackless. Lets take a look on the flip.
Remember
Wag the Dog? The film came out in the late 1990s, it starred Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro. It was a fictional account of a corrupt president who fakes a war so he can get away with covering up a personal scandal.
The news media went crazy drawing comparisons between Clinton's attempt to assassinate Osama Bin Laden and his Lewinsky affair. News report after news report mentioned the film, showed clips from the film, and referred to the film when talking about Clinton.
Contrast that orgy of editorializing media with the last month's rainstorms and the Al Gore movie "An Inconvenient Truth" currently playing in theaters.
From the July 6th, WaPo:
National Weather Service officials said some areas were struck by microbursts -- violent spates of wind accelerating downward, striking ground and spreading in every direction, like a water balloon exploding on impact.
More than 80,000 people in the District, Maryland and Virginia lost electricity on the Fourth of July, and as of yesterday afternoon, about 22,100 were still waiting for the lights to come on. Some of those residents have lost power repeatedly in the spate of storms.
Zero mentions of even the possibility of a cause for these severe rainstorms. The WaPo seems to view such a mention as "editorializing" even though Al Gore specifically mentions increased year over year storm severity in the Northeast as a primary effect from global warming.
How is this not newsworthy? How is the fact a film playing across the country warns of exactly what is taking place not something that a reporter would find relevant to the story?
Newsday:
Long Island
Flood of trouble
Quick-moving system soaked Island and left highways, lawns, streets under water
BY JAMES FITZPATRICK JR.
Newsday Staff Writer
July 6, 2006
Heavy rains drenched central Long Island yesterday, wreaking havoc on roadways for commuters and leaving the yards of some residents resembling a swampland.
A hefty 1.48 inches of rain fell yesterday and caused the National Weather Service to issue an urban flood advisory for all low-lying areas such as highways, streets and underpasses in mostly Suffolk County. The rain caused significant delays during the morning commute, but by 1 p.m., officials said all major roadways on Long Island were clear.
"It seemed to come out of nowhere," said Eileen Peters, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation's Long Island office. "It came down in torrents."
They heavy rains left Department of Transportation highway workers scrambling to clear water from rain-flooded roads. Hundreds of Long Island drivers were left frustrated as they returned to work after the holiday weekend, state officials said.
Here's the New York Times waxing nostalgic over a nearly destroyed bridge on July 2nd:
MINISINK FORD, N.Y
Erik Jacobs/The New York Times
July 2 -- It has survived the Great Pumpkin Flood of 1903, a fire in the early 1930's and, perhaps most significantly of all, almost 160 years. Last week, not even the floods that tore a wide, costly swath of destruction along the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers could tear down this one simple old thing.
A bridge.
The bridge that spans the Upper Delaware River, connecting Minisink Ford, N.Y., with Lackawaxen, Pa., is not just any bridge. It is the Sullivan County sister of the famed Brooklyn Bridge and was designed by John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge's architect.
Completed in 1848, the Delaware Aqueduct, known commonly as the Roebling Bridge, is the oldest wire-cable suspension bridge in America.
Last week's floods washed away homes, businesses, cars, cows, trees and, tragically, a wide span of Interstate 88 near Binghamton, N.Y., and the two truckers driving along it. A number of bridges in New York and Pennsylvania were destroyed.
Again, zero mentions of "An Inconvenient Truth."
You get my point. I'm not arguing that these news sources have to give free publicity to the very film warning of exactly these types of natural disasters. But how is it not newsworthy to observe that this film predicts exactly the sort of severe flooding we've seen in the Northeast over the past three weeks?
In the film, Al Gore shows slides of flooding in Pennsylvania. He talks specifically of the air flow up the east coast of the United States gaining moisture from a warmed up gulf and thus increasing rainstorms as a result.
It's a simple question: How is "An Inconvenient Truth" and its references to flooding not currently part of the story surrounding the northeast rainstorms?
How corrupt/afraid is our media that merely mentioning the relevancy of a storm to a film is verboten? Are they that afraid they'll be called "liberal"? It's not editorializing to note that a major film deals with an issue as it plays out in real time. They've done it time and again. If two kids were killed while racing sportscars, does anyone think the media wouldn't mention "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift" during their news broadcast? Of course they would. They do it all the time.
So why not here? Are they so terrified of the hatchet of Wingnuttia?
Yet more reason to be completely disgusted by traditional media. It will be a pure joy watching these relics die on the vine over the next few years. If they won't do the real journalism, make the connections, raise the questions, then we bloggers will.