The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate

Middle East Weather Report

I'm watching CNN do a full-on weather report on the Middle East. It's kinda surreal...I've seen U.S. weather people make glancing references to global weather conditions when there's a major action somewhere, but hardly even to the extent that countries are delineated -- more usually, it's reported on from a global map viewpoint. This report I just saw was entirely like a local weather report -- a map with temperatures of major cities, discussion of cold fronts in Kuwait, etc. The report was generally centered on a sand storm in Kuwait, which has obvious strategic military implications and thus is newsworthy, but the weather guy gave the area the full weather guy treatment. He didn't even talk about the weather anywhere else (like the U.S., or other parts of the world). It was the Middle East local weather report, from the U.S.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this -- on the contrary, I think it's very humanizing to lay a familiar template over a region that is numbingly distant from us. It was just weird. I don't think I've encountered anything quite like it before on mainstream U.S. TV news. And it really was humanizing-- it's one thing to have a weatherperson wave at some picture of the globe and hear about floods here or drought there. It's another thing entirely to see it brought down to the level we've grown used to seeing for so long. Honestly, it was a little disorienting, simply because usually when I'm seeing the weather at that level, I'm in the place that's on the screen.

I'm going on about this more than is probably justified, and who knows if this will become common enough so you other U.S. media watchers will see something on the order of what I saw. This probably should be filed under "you had to be there". Anyway, it struck me, and so you get to hear about it. Lucky you.

On a related note, CNN is far too excited about this war for my taste. I half-expect to see actual foam coming from the mouths of the anchorpeople. Or froth, at least. What a sad position to be in.

"Today's news: Ohboyohboyohboyohboy! It's finally gonna happen!"

{shudder}