Net)raskan Thursday. July 22, 1993 Opinion S\M Kl I'l II I I) Media flood real disaster The 40 days and 40 nights of rain here on the Great Plains long ago wore thin. Any sane per son, starved for honest, unadulterated sunlight, is by now searching for live stock or virgins to sacrifice to the Sun God. Perhaps more pestilential than the torrential downpours themselves is the news coverage of their side ef fects. The Flood of ’93 is now an Official Disaster, complete with its own little logo for the evening news stories. It’s the first time since the Gulf War and the Election that they have so graced such and event. What’s wrong with the media cov erage of the flood? The same tiling that’s wrong with media coverage of any natural disaster. I don’t even need to see the first five minutes of the news to tell you what format it will follow. Headline: Floods in the Midwest (fade to logo). Cut to: Map of central U.S., with Mississippi River high lighted and shown as being half as wide as Iowa.'Stock footage of a levee breaking, water rushing through. More stock footage of housetops poking through rushing water, with a street sign or two thrown in for good mea sure. Still more stock footage of people using boats to get from place to place (and if it’s ABC, throw in Peter Jennings, outfitted like Bogart in “The African Queen”). Cut to: Meat pup pet anchor with serious intonation looking appropriately concerned. And, of course, the most offensive part, the segments that really gall me, are the “human interest/suffering” bites. News crews go to a submerged town, find the most miserable-look ing human there, and shove a camera in their tear-streaked free. “Well, you’ve lost everything, your house is a sodden mess, pil the treasures of a lifetime — baby pictures, wedding pictures, heirlooms — ruined, your crops are under six feet of water, your machinery is a loss, the livestock drowned. HOW DO YOU FEEL, HUH? WON’T YOU PLEASE TELL OUR AUDIENCE HOW MISER When the flood waters recede, and the news crews go back to their natural habitats In New York, and the tearful hlnterlanders are left to recover in ano nymity, I will be thankful that I no longer have to suffer the emotional vampirism of network news, feeding off my native region. ABLE YOU FEEL AT THIS VERY MOMENT?” Were it me,.I’d reply “not as mis erable as the orifice I insert that minicam into will if you don’t get it out of my face right now.” But, inevi tably, people respond to this, out of some sick, twisted desire for fame. There are three set types of answers, to be used in rotation every day. The first is numb shock and disbe lief, surveying the flooded field or home. The second is the tearful “we’ve lost EVERYTHING” shot. Finally, there’s the resolute “Well, we just have to trust in the Good Lord” spiel, delivered in a horrendous accent. Anyone on the coasts watching this will get an interesting and dis torted picture of the intenor of the country. To them, it must seem like Brigadoon, which slumbers peace fully until a natural disaster (flood, drought, tornado, take your pick) wakes the townspeople. Whereupon waking, the natives are reduced to near-mutes, a big bunch of crybabies who can’t take a little property dam age, or a pack of credulous bumpkins straight out of “Elmer Gantry,” the kind who cheered Frederick March in “Inherit the Wind,” sitting around waiting for the Good Lord to deliver them with an Ark. I reserve my worst commentary for the treatment of the President’s three, count ‘cm, three journeys to Iowa and Missouri. Bedecked in cow boy boots and golf shirt, ready for the cover of GQ, Bill Clinton made stops there to and from his summit in To kyo, and ventured there last week. I guess he cares three times more than Bush did about Hurricane Andrew victims, cavalierly powerboating with the knowledge of terrible suffering. Clinton cut short his Hawaii vacation by a whole 12 hours, after nearly two days of hints that the press would roast him as surely as it did Bush if he didn’t go to the Midwest and show that he cared. And for what? A couple of photo ops filling sandbags. Listening to pa thetic tales of woe in Des Moines, putting him in Full Empathy Mode, biting his lower lip and sobbing “hang . in there.” He can have his pygmy Labor Secretary pass out checks for a couple million each at a Flood Sum mit. Two million? Hmm. Ought to cover the overtime pay for emergency workers in St. Louis. When the flood waters recede, and the news crews go back to their natu ral habitats in New York, and the tearful hinterlanders are left to re cover in anonymity, I will be thankful that I no longer have to suffer the emotional vampirism of network news, feeding on my native region. • No, I can watch coverage of some poor slob in a hellhole like Bosnia, Somalia or Los Angeles, and feel grateful that at least I don’t live there. KepftoM I* a graduate student la history, so alumnus of the UNL College of Law sad a Summer Dally Nebraskan colamalst. LKT I I KS TO Mil; KlMIOR Rush Limbaugh column gets mixed reviews According to your latest whimsi cal and utterly goofy column (“Limbaugh craze will soon fade” — DN, 7/15/93), you need one more history lesson, Jeremy. Ahem. The unprecedented popularity of Rush Limbaugh has little to do with Rush, and has much to do with his message. That message is not “pov erty is funny.” Indeed, it’s much the opposite. He simply, if outrageously, recognizes the key to alleviating pov erty and despair; the maximization of everyone’s potential under a free en terprise system, higher standards of excellence, stronger traditional val ues and a public trust in the histori cally American ideals of lower taxes and limited government. Yet you try painfully hard to be i “cool, hip, cutting edge,” pretending in vain that conservatives are some passing fancy, just a temporary nui sance preventing your backward he roes (Bill, Hillary, Marx, etc.) from doing the business of “reinventing America” in the image of all those sadly ruined moments to “fairness” in Eastern Europe. But for all your silly caricaturing, you end up being unable to disguise the mind-numbing dull ness of your message: bigger, fatter, costlier government, packaged as an antidote to a multi-media phenom enon. Rush Limbaugh is not the fad you wish he was. He is a high-profile, intelligent, often funny spokesman of the largest movement in American politics: the rebirth of a conservatism bom in revolution a scant 217 years ago. No slapdash splatter of left-wing propaganda by talentless liberals can counter such a wonderful force. But keep trying. You make it that much easier to prove the point. I would like to voice my com ments on Mr. Fitzpatrick’s article on Rush on July 15, 1993: “marvelous!” Boyd Johnston sophomore President Students For America Sanjib Bhuyan Lincoln Nebraskan Editorial Board University of Nebraaka-Lincoln Jeff Singer. Jeremy Fitzpatrick. JeffZeleny. Sam Kepfield.. DeDra Janssen.;. Editor. 472-1766 . Features Editor Copy Desk Chief .Columnist ,.. Staff Reporter I mu >i1 U \ SufT editorials represent the official policy of the Summer 1993 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. 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