 
Gripping visuals like this
have contributed to a overwhelming torrent of flood stories
A weary TV nation asks . . .
When will flood
stories
crest?
By Content [formerly, Press]
Correspondent A.J. Liebling
with Nolli Tangere '03 in Old
Sludgebury
CEDAR SHAKES, Iowa – [Copy
desk please confirm place name – Ed.][No can do; they all took the
buyout –
Pub.] As the flood of coverage about the annual spring
overflow of the Mississippi River and its tributaries
into its natural wetland storage area reaches record levels, all over
the Midwest and the Nation, viewers and readers ask
when the torrent of coverage will crest. At week's end, the flood of river stories had
reached 6 minutes per hour over its normal level on national news shows
and an unprecedented 25 minutes per hour over its natural level on
all cable news channels. For
three weeks, unprepared television viewers with no power to resist have
had to contend with an unprecedented flood of video of the
good citizens of Sioux Me, Idaho [Surely,
Iowa? – Managing Ed.] [Maybe Ohio? – Ed.] shoveling
sandbags and farmers in Council Flats, Ohio [Well, somewhere west of
Pittsfield – Ed.] pointing out waterlogged
cornfields to cable news bimbos in $300 designer jeans and
Wellington boots. This torrential
coverage has washed away all real journalism in its path, with the
exception of chatter about Michelle Obama's dress choices and terrorist
connections. Major stories such as the Democratic surrender
on immunity for law-breaking telecoms, the one vote margin by which the
Supreme Court upheld basic Constitutional rights, the collapse of world
credit markets, and the continued failure of various Iraqi thugs to
form a representative government so long as they can rely on American
blood to prop up their internecine squabbling have all been drowned in
the overwhelming tide of flood packages. According
to Rip N. Read, Zell Professor of Real Estate Leverage and Journalism
at
Regent University, don't expect flood coverage to crest anytime soon.
this just
in . . .
Meanwhile, out west, TV viewers, already exhausted by the heat
of a desert summer,
are now contending with outbreaks of wildfire coverage, a seasonal
phenomenon to be expected
in the uninhabitable arid wastelands of California.
The outbreaks can be traced to a long-term shift in viewing
patterns away from
news coverage of the actual economic plight of a dysfunctional state
government and
the collapse of public services in LA County, notably the
utter lack of hospitals serving
1.5 million South Central Los Angeles residents.
Further contributing to the spike in wildfire stories has been
a weakening in the newsmaking power
of California's charismatic groper Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The
Governor's uncharacteristically
low profile has forced California's
brain-dead media outlets to fill space with live helo shots of wild
fires burning in the arid mountain ranges
where some idiots, oblivious to the danger, have chosen to build
mini-mansions while refusing to
spend money on the fire fighting resources needed to protect their
trophy
homes. "It seems like a high price to pay for not
shoveling snow," commented one sweltering Angeleno.
"The visual appeal of a cable
news airhead in
waders doing a live shot up to his pipik in the river is just too
powerful to resist. Combine that with some helicopter shots
of barns surrounded by water, and you've got an irresistible force," he
said. The surging flood of live
shots has not only overwhelmed other major stories, it has drowned out
any real discussion of the causes of the dramatic footage, including
reckless greed-driven conversion of natural wetland into subdivisions
and farms and
building ever higher levees that cause even more water to course
downstream, where it becomes someone else's problem.
The toll that the apparently
endless tide of
flood coverage has exacted on TV viewers is estimated [By whom? – Ed.]
to reach into the billions. "What the f*** is this s***?
I wanted to see Kevin Garnett dancing around with the
trophy," said James T. Burke, an Old Sludgebury firefighter. "Who are these people anyway?" asked
Mrs. Katherine D. Iatellia of Sludge Falls. "Who told them to
farm in the middle of a lake anyway? I want to find out if
Angelina had her twins already. If this flood coverage
continues much longer, I may have to turn off the TV." Indeed, Prof. Read thinks that only a celebrity
birth, death, or public stumble from detox could stop the flood of
Mississippi River coverage. "Even R. Kelly's acquittal of sex
crimes he was captured on tape committing couldn't halt the flood
stories. It's like some sort of unstoppable force of nature." | 
Dr.
Harold
Shipman, Department of Veterans' Neglect, Wehorin-Walter Reed Army
Medical
Center: