Somehow I missed this story when it came out five years ago. I’m running it now because it seems to say a lot about our cultural meltdown. I mean, who knew it could be this bad?
Weatherman Jamie Simpson Tells Viewers to Stop Complaining About Tornado Warnings Interrupting ‘The Bachelorette’: ‘This Is Pathetic’
byu/Pwuz innottheonion
Tornadoes are not unknown in Ohio. You should have seen Xenia when the tornado got through with it. That was the 1974 tornado, in which 32 people were killed. I had occasion to pass through there a few days later.
So… They interrupted “The Bachelorette” to deliver a tornado emergency report–and the audience went wild. What? You’re interrupting “The Bachelorette”? Who the blazes do you think you are? Hell’s bells, man! This is “The Bachelorette” we’re talkin’ about! This is what’s important! How dare you interrupt it???
The TV weatherman called the viewers’ outburst “pathetic.” Sir, you’re too kind.
It reminds me of the public burning up the switchboards in 1968 when the network cut off the Jets-Raiders football game to show a special presentation of Heidi. Thought they were just cutting off the last few minutes of a football game whose outcome was a foregone conclusion. So of course those last few minutes were among the most astounding and exciting in football history.
Anyone remember that? I was watching that game…
Well, no tornado ever agreed to hold off until a TV show was over.
In all fairness, some years the tornado alerts have turned out to be so many false alarms issued so frequently that after a while people stop paying attention to them.
You would know that better than I. Sounds like The Boy Who Cried Wolf. But you know what would happen if they didn’t issue an alert and a tornado clobbered a city. Lawsuits galore.
Out litigious society has place weather forecasters in a bind. There have been actual lawsuits when harm came to someone from a weather prediction which proved inaccurate. So nowadays, they err to the side of caution and make dire predictions. It’s stupidity. When I was a kid, we saw weather forecasts as hit or miss, at best.
I live in an area where weather is remarkably consistent. Clear skies, warm temperatures, little chance of precipitation and maybe some wind in the afternoon probably works 325 days of the year. For something on the order of 6 weeks, we have afternoon monsoons which can range from short periods of heavy rain to more extended rains and local flooding. I’ve seen water 1 foot deep in the gutters of Tucson’s main streets, and an hour later, there are only a few mud puddles left to remind you that it rained.
Monsoons can be predicted in a general way, but as to specific results; no way. If I want to know what the weather will do, I look out at the sky and make my best guess. My home is at the high point between two watersheds, so the weather in my neighborhood is less predictable than most places in the general area. I recall a winter’s day when Tucson was getting a rare steady rain.
My right hand man suggested that I might want to leave early, just in case this kept up. Good thing he did, because by the time I got home, I was driving through 4” of snow, and in a sports car with low ground clearance. I made it to the mouth of my driveway, but couldn’t make it up the slope. The next morning, the ground was bare and I drove up my driveway with ease. Even in places where weather forecasts are almost boring, there are surprises.
So, while I do not like the fact that weather forecasters sometimes cause interruptions, it’s not as if they are the cause of inclement weather. We are privileged to be able to have the accuracy that is possible in our day. In places were extreme weather occurs, tornado warnings and accurate predictions of severe winter storms can be life and death matters.
Heidi-gate. Yes, that was quite the event. There was a program, sort of a one time thing, called The Sports Pages which came out circa 1999 which had two stories, presented somewhat comically, and the story of Heidi-gate was one of them. According to the story, a newly hired, and inexperienced veteran, suffering PSTD from Vietnam, was given strict instructions to start the movie Heidi, at a certain time, while the senior employee was weighing down a barstool, nearby. Whe he did as he was told, there was an immediate furor and he had a flashback of sorts, but all turned out fine in the end. It was a serious story, but had some comic relief to offset the seriousness.
The other part of the program was entitled “How Doc’ Waddams Broke 90”, featuring Bob Newhart as Doc’ Waddams, a golfer of limited skill playing against a character played by Kelsey Grammar, who knew the rules in detail and applied them brutally. Waddams was unable to break 90, until this game, but Grammar’s character found a rule to snatch that accomplishment away, at which point Waddams attacked him with a golf club. (This was played quite broadly, and Grammar’s character was totally unsympathetic. No one minded how he met his demise, including his own wife.)
Waddams went to trial and was acquitted, claiming that he was acting in self defense, because he could not survive in the same world as Grammar. As I said, it was played very broadly, and not meant to be taken seriously. After the acquittal, in a manner that only Newhart could pull off, he asked the court to rule on the validity of the shot that Grammar had claimed was illegal, and after warning Newhart that he was pushing his luck, the judge ruled that Waddams had indeed broken 90 that day. IIRC. the show ended with Waddams striking up a friendship with Grammar’s widow, and left the possibilities of that relationship open ended. Funny as can be.
All I can remember of the Heidi Bowl is the lopped-off football game and the intense public brou-ha-ha.
These days, there would have been riots. 🙂
I don’t mind when they interrupt a program to bring news of a weather event, but I do mind when they interrupt a program to go on and on saying the same thing in different ways of a possible weather event that never happens.
We do get tired of being urged into a state of alarm… and then nothing happens.