Snow! Ice! Cold! They sweep the land in what media types call "wild weather" or a storm so bad it could "bury" the Midwest and New England. In winter no less. Shocking! Sounds more like a SyFy Channel triple feature than an actual crisis. But The Fort Worth Star-Telegram even warned of a "worst-case weather scenario" [1] that might complicate Super Bowl travel.
Snow in February? Must be a conspiracy.
Groundhog Day is this week, so let's blame winter on Punxsutawney Phil, who didn't see his shadow, but is nevertheless powerless to prevent another six weeks of media stupidity.
Maybe it's not just foolishness. Perhaps it's a shadow conspiracy.
After all, this much horrendous media coverage must be an orchestrated effort. Like the Chinese using "Top Gun" [2] movie footage to pretend they have developed cool military jets or Tom Cruise leading a Nazi rebellion against Hitler. Crazy tinfoil hat types might even blame the Rothschilds since Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and his wife Lynn Forester de Rothschild just bought 70 percent of Weather Central [3]. After all, aren't the Illuminati supposed to be able to control the weather?
No, they can't, but journalists can. They control the weather every single day by reporting only the most outlandish things they can find. Tornado in Alaska? The news trucks are there. Wild fires in California? The newsies are there. Weather or not, here they come.
And when it comes to weather, they scream "SNOW!" at the top of their lungs like they are trying to cause an avalanche - because that's precisely what they are trying to do. This bunch of media snow flakes loves their winter vocabulary because it shovels viewers to the tube: "blizzard," "snow storm," "record-breaking" and more.
Over at ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer says this winter could be [drum roll please] "the new normal." Naturally, the end-of-the-world types think so. ABC 'contacted ten climate scientists to ask their take.' They predictably took the "we will bury you" approach to snow and blamed the Al Gorean villain. "The consensus? Global warming is playing a role, by shifting weather patterns in unpredictable ways. Many say the forecast for the future calls for record-breaking precipitation and extreme temperatures year round," reported Linsey Davis.
Maybe ABC would be a bit more convincing if they hadn't tried to tell us the Great Recession was also part of the "new normal" [4] back in 2009. Then Alice Gomstyn told readers "it's a world of 'new normals,' with more belt-tightening, less income and, in many cases, a newfound gratitude for the most basic human comforts: family, home and health."
Or maybe they'd be convincing if journalists didn't say on one hand that no weather event can be linked to climate change and then, with the other hand, link every weather event to changing climate. Instead of giving us the news, journalists toss out agenda like they are slopping the hogs.
Part of their recent insanity might be tied to their disappointment over the departure of White House energy and climate czar Carol Browner. Journos held out such hope that Browner would be what one lefty termed the "all-star quarterback of President Obama's green dream team." Two years into the O years and still no radical climate legislation. The media are bound to be disappointed.
But so many journalists working independently of one another can't be this bad. Can they?
To paraphrase our dear president, yes they can.
Remember, these are the same pandering journalists who only a few weeks ago were obsessing about dead birds falling from the sky and dead fish in the Chesapeake Bay. CNN went so far as to treat the events as a sign of a possible apocalypse. 'AC 360' host Anderson Cooper brought on 'Left Behind' movie star Kirk Cameron to comment [5] and, to put it bluntly, he thought Cooper was nuts. 'I think it's really kind of silly to try to equate birds falling out of the sky with some kind of an end-times theory,' he told the audience.
At least somebody in Hollywood isn't a complete loon. Cameron is my pick to star in 'Apocalypse No' anytime.
But it has been a bad winter so far. In the mid-Atlantic, we're a few blizzards shy of 2010, but we did have a storm that caused regional gridlock and made some commutes up to 13 hours long [6]. That gave new and often four-letter additions to the term 'fail.' (That might reflect how well run the nation's capital is, instead of how bad winter has become.) But blizzards, ice and more are scary and dangerous.
They just aren't the end of the world. We've seen them all before … every single year. As the Associated Press called it, this is a ''Groundhog Day' [7] of a winter.' Maybe that means we can stop blaming the annoying pests in the media and blame the annoying pests burrowing underground. Or just blame me and my shadow.
Dan Gainor has seen his shadow and is hunkering down to shiver and watch six more weeks of media about global warming. Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business [8]and Culture [9]. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.