Was Gustav a disappointment to the news networks?

The only hurricane coverage I ever want or need is the live radar and, to a lesser extent, the projected path. The rest is just fluff.

Well well well Mother nature unleashes her fury again and we want to send money to a city that is occupying space own by the sea. Move them all out of NO and rebuild elsewhere, this is not rocket science below sea level means you will eventually be treading water.

Obviously omegapartic!e has never had a teenage child. You can't possibly be blaming the mother of this 17 yearold for doing what teenagers have been doing since... well... since there have been teenagers. What the heck did that comment have to do with this story anyhow?

The teenage pregnant story isn't that much news, if the motherhood of the vice-presidential candidate wasn't such a key part of her resume. But it shows a certain failing on Palin's part (and more broadly on the entire idea of raising someone in a pro-life household with minimal discussion of birth control), and reflects on her abilities as a result. (The McCain campaign is the one that highlighted her "hockey mom" status, as the fact that she is raising 5 children makes up for her lack of governmental experience)

I was hoping the city would be wiped off the map. It's a stupid place for a city and a huge waste of money. Just give the money to the people and tell them to move.

The hurricane "hype" was a political build up to show how much better Gustav was handled versus Katrina. A category one storm that didn't directly hit NOLA made the opening day look good for the repugs. And it buried the weekend of Palin's investigation into troopergate, etc.

Of course they were disappointed - the ratings were horrible (I'm guessing.)

That's all TV is about these days - ratings. Who can hold the viewers the longest? And, sadly, nothing says ratings like a disaster happening to other people. Or buildings being ripped apart on live TV just across the street from the TV crew. Did we honestly need a continual radar loop of the hurricane on the lower right corner of the screen? Yep, that's a hurricane, and yes, they rotate. They'll do that you know. So here, we'll show it to you over and over again in case you forgot. All day.

At least the story broke about the governor's daughter being pregnant (*gasp* the horror!) otherwise they would have had nothing to dissect that evening. The funny thing is, even though the candidates all stated that family is "off limits" (and rightly so) that's all the media continued to talk about. It was as if everyone had never heard about teenage pregnancy before (one third of girls under the age of 20 people - it does happen.)

Recently, whenever stuff like this happens on TV, I think of some Tool lyrics (wow, I don't get to use Tool lyrics very often) from their song 'Vicarious': "Cos I need to watch things die, from a good safe distance / Vicariously I live while the whole world dies"

Oh, and please correct me where I'm wrong - I hate leaving snarky, sarcastic comments with bad statistics and/or data. :P

The worst (or best) moment I saw was Stephanie Abrams on the Weather Channel reporting live from somewhere that got hit by the eye of the hurricane. She implored viewers to gather the family around the TV because she was about to show some "extraordinary video." Fortunately, I didn't take her advice. The video was a before-and-after shot of a street with some tree limbs down. I kid you not. It could have been any street in the country that's ever been through a severe thunderstorm.

I'd like to think she was being sarcastic, but I don't give her that much credit.

It's so true. All the reporters in the field were having a hard time trying to make things more dramatic then they really were. And I just read that the G.O.P. has resumed all planned activities and events for the convention this week. Now the Obama loving media will have to pick up their disappointed selves and truck on up to St. Paul and cover the convention they were hoping the Hurricane would cancel.

it would make more sense for those reporters to move to the small towns that actually got hit hard. because there is more to the gulf coast than New Orleans. i'm sure some of those residents are getting tired of the new orleans-centric hurricane news.