While you sheep were watching the six hour commercial-laden Super Bowl, I went to the supermarket which was blissfully desolate. Then I came home and watched a show celebrating the 30-year anniversary of New England's Blizzard of '78. I was only four when it hit so only have faint memories of the ten foot snow drifts. It snowed heavily for 33 hours and winds reached 90 mph. If you want more details you can read Wikipedia.
What I didn't realize, until seeing the show, was that Hull and Scituate, two oceanside towns that I now live amidst, were the worst hit. Now, am I presently worried about a reoccurrence? Absolutely not. First of all, I live a full mile from the ocean. Secondly, we live in a completely different world than that of 1978.
The entire tone of the show was, "It's not a question of if, but when" - meaning that another devastating storm would soon hit New England. Before the show started, I braced myself for talk of "global warming". Thankfully there was none to swallow. But there was that unmitigated alarmism which has become the default tone of these breathless hack reporters.
In 1978, they essentially didn't have satellite imagery. At best, meteorologists got one black and white image a day as opposed to the three-dimensional, real-time, high definition satellite feeds of today. Heck, they showed the news coverage of the storm from Channel Five and the weather maps had hand-written annotations on them! Though it should go without saying, computers didn't exist in 1978. Hence, forecasters weren't able to predict, no less convince people to take precautions for an anomalously strong storm. So when the next great blizzard comes, for one thing, there won't be tens of thousands of drivers caught on the roads.
By the way, they blamed "fifty deaths" on the storm. That's a tiny number to begin with and even at face value I am skeptical of its significance. They probably blamed every death on the storm. I mean, I'll bet fifty people die of natural causes and accidents every couple of days up here anyway. The only difference between some kid dying from falling off his bike on a normal day and from disappearing in a snow drift is that the latter enables thirty-years of media-fueled hysteria. Every time the slightest bit of snow is forecast, the jurassic crowd up here not only does their milk, bread, and eggs run, they generally work themselves up to a panic. It's one thing for Carolinians to freak out over a rare snowfall, but up here even though it snows all the time, mind you uneventfully, paleo-M*ssholes become untethered any time there's flurries.
I am telling you, Massachusetts is the center of the Moron universe. They are conservative on the things in need of reform and progressive on the stuff that should be left alone. They are the most educated but the most provincial. They are the oldest but the most infantile. I don't know that human history has ever witnessed a people more delusional about themselves.
This TV special on the Blizzard demonstrated much of what I am talking about. The four reporters all had special, first-hand accounts of the storm. In fact it was meteorologist Harvey Leonard's first month as a broadcaster. The sorry truth is, that media personalities in Boston haven't changed one iota IN THE LAST THIRTY YEARS. From the sports pages to the televised news, Boston is a time warp having made no progression whatsoever. Can you imagine if IBM or General Electric didn't turn over its management for thirty years? Bill Simmons has likened the tenure of Boston Globe sportswriters to those of Supreme Court Justices - someone has to die for a job to become available.
Listening to these crusty reporters is, for someone who grew up with them, thoroughly depressing and not to mention quite soporific. There's no animation, no dynamism, and no oomph behind their reporting. They've been talking about the Blizzard of '78 forever. For crying out loud it's been three decades. But this is Boston, a town mired in the past - or at least in its nostalgic image thereof.
Altogether I still found the show more interesting than the Super Bowl. In fact I barely watch sports anymore - even with my home teams vying for championships.
I consider this a testament to my personal growth; y'all should try to replace your decades-old pastimes with novel enthusiasms. Life is too short and too bountiful to wed one's spirits to the varied noise emanating from cable boxes.
Watching television should ideally be an amusing diversion from your life NOT a substitute for it.
1 comment:
I think that the level of dynamism and change in a community is inversely proportional to the level of socialism/statism in the community. Socialism/statism has this effect for a number of reasons... it prohibits economic growth which is the primary way in which a community experiences dynamism, it instills in members of the community a reliance on people other than themselves as far as propagating change is concerned, etc. etc.
You know where else there was lots of socialism/statism? The territories of the former USSR, which up until the fall of the Berlin wall and maybe even for a short time afterward in all of the political turmoil, was indicative of an entire region of the world which seemed to be frozen fifty years back in history.
Cuba is another good example.
What do you think of that? Do you think the level of socialism/statism that is so popular in Boston/MA has anything to do with your observations concerning its apparent temporal stasis?
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