Thursday, August 16, 2007
There was an episode of “CSI” in which Gil Grissom and his diverse team of crime scene investigators showed up to find that a father had left his young son in the car on one of the hottest days of the year. Diagnosis: BABY-B-Q.
What got us thinking about this scene, you may ask? The answer: HEAT! Bugger, it’s boiling out!
Of course this isn’t news to anyone with the unfortunate burden of being alive and mobile during the dog days of summer. If you have an epidermis, it has been burned, if you have sweat glands they are open and flowing and if you’ve got air-conditioning it is on. If not, you’ve probably turned the refrigerator on its side so that you can sleep in it as if it were a coffin. Temperatures are in the hundreds, asphalt is bubbling, and if you’re a good grandchild like I am, you’re calling at least every other day to make sure Granny isn’t spending too much time out in her garden without her big floppy hat and an ice-cold bottle of Evian.
I don’t care if the tomatoes are as big as basset hounds, I don’t want to have to deal with a heat-stroked Granny (she’s addled as it is, kids).
Anyway, it is hot and the newscasters at all the nearby television stations can’t help but feel that we aren’t getting that message loud enough or clear enough.
Flip on any local channel and you will see any number of reporters standing out in their lovely suits, the female correspondents invariably in floral scarves, holding up thermometers and water bottles whilst talking over B-roll footage showing dogs panting and people who have no business in shorts wearing shorts. Egad! It is a crisis!
HEAT TRACK 2007, with meteorologists Larry, Curly and Moe. Don’t trust your senses! Let us tell you what’s going on outside!
Aside from the standard forecast, telling us what the weather will be like tomorrow through Wednesday of next week, we don’t want the television news telling us how HOT it is outside. We can gather that information for ourselves, thank you. Some of us can even breathe on our own and recite the alphabet. We don’t need the television news to inform us that we’re sweating through our best shirts, sticking to the seats of our cars, burning our fingers on exterior metal door handles and morbidly keeping our eyes peeled at the back seats of cars parked next to ours.
All that need be said is this: “It is hot again today. Keep Fido watered, keep baby out of the car, keep the SPF 10 handy and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Thank you so much. Now on to what color underwear Paris Hilton wasn’t wearing today.”
Unless the heat causes something to happen, it is not news; it is weather. And it’s great that most news outlets in Kansas promise accurate and precise weather coverage when it’s needed but, ladies and gentlemen of the press, when it’s not needed it’s just too much information.
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