Let me first say that my heart goes out to the people without homes due to the tragic incidents down South. My money would go out to them as well, but I have none.. (Actually I am planning on sending a very small amount tomorrow - every lil' bit helps, right?) I was in N'Orlins a few years ago and had two or three days to walk the stinky, humid streets of the French Quarter and had a great time just walking around and looking at everything. I could have easily seen myself living there. Lots 'o' good music, foods, neat buildings to look at, manhole covers, weirdos, and all that kind of good stuff that tickles one's creative pickle.
Well, thankfully I didn't move there, for after the storm last week I would have found myself swimming in the streets with everybody else wishing that all of my belongings were buoyant. Actually I'd be wishing I was buoyant, ‘cause I am a bit of an aqua phobic and never learned how to swim. Mom had me take lessons as a kid, but I took to them like a wet piece of tape sticks to Jell-O. If it's anything more than a bathtub and I'm immersed in it, I get a little weirded out; exspecially in water that I can't see through.
After the storm I knew a storm of a different kind was imminent and I was right: The Hurricane Montages on news shows. You know what I'm talking about - some sappy patriotic song plays as a backdrop to various flood images and video clips that were slapped together. And what's the one staple that's in montages such as this? The Token American Flag shot. And it's usually at the end of the clips. I saw the first one over last weekend and said "Okay, I bet you anything the Token American Flag Shot is due any second now." Sure enough, an image of Old Glory propped up on a wrecked home popped up on the screen. An Aaron Neville tune about a N’Orlans flood was playing and I wanted to throw my bowl of cereal at the TV.
It snot because I don't care about what happened, it's just the aspect of the media milking it. I've heard that more often than not a photographer will see a photo op in situations like this, prop a nice clean shiny flag somewhere in there, and snap that photo hoping it will be the next cover of Time Magazine. Think about it: in times of peril, do you think that somebody who is half dead, burned, just lost their home, etc., happened to be carrying a flag to wrap around themselves like a warm, patriotic blanky?
Just tell us the dang news and get on with the show. Spend the oodles of money you pay the people to hunt down the money shots of misery and cut and paste them together on donations instead, please. No Aaron Neville-infested montage is needed to report news effectively.
It hasn't happened yet, but so help me Gawd, if I hear that f*&king Lee Greenwood song playing under yet another montage of misery and am sitting next to a hammer, whichever network I see it on will be receiving a bill to replace our TV shortly thereafter.
