Hockey & hurricanes: it's all just TV

David Sherman

In between watching the first hockey game of the season, a 1-0 nailbiter between Montreal and Toronto, we watched another game. This was between Hurricane Milton and a CNN reporter to see if he was going to be swept away by a storm surge, hit by a flying house, decapitated by a swirling road sign or impaled by a torn sign or fence post.

Now, as humans, we undoubtedly should have been more upset by the threat to several million Americans who set up shop in a large swamp and live to clean up and fight insurance companies from hurricane to hurricane, but the hockey game and the storm were a draw.

It’s not exactly that it’s hard to feel sympathy for anything to do with Ron DeSantis, who is as human as a street sign, or that we’re hockey fanatics. How can you not love a governor who walks around in a polo shirt with his name and title embroidered on his chest in case he forgets who he is.

It’s probably because CNN turns every weather event into hours of “Watch our drenched-to-the-bone reporters stand in the typhoon winds and torrential rains, looking over their shoulders every few seconds ready to dodge airborne traffic lights.

The network stars are out there in the deluge, wrapped in dripping coats, one hand on their hats or ear pieces, the other on their mics, praying they can get out of this and to a bar before they become a statistic. Their repetitive script includes evacuate or take shelter, though they do neither. Will the Leafs score? Will Milton blow Anderson Cooper and friends to Cuba?

The real story is about the millions who have evacuated or taken to shelters and worry for their lives, homes, families, insurance and work. But the reporters have this fondness for playing macho Hurricane Hunters in the jaws of death. It makes for ratings and promotions, if you survive. Not that different than being an all-star goaltender.

This might be somewhat interesting if they had more to say than, “It’s really wet, it’s really windy and it’s going to get worse by tomorrow. There’s a marina down the road and a boat will probably be sitting on the road, right where I’m standing. Hope I’m not under it.”

Why is the Canadiens first game more important that the plight of the inundated, under-insured, homeless, jobless and mourning, other than the fact we’re Canadiens’ fans.

Is it because Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a biped without a soul, who believes anything to do with climate change is woke and has done everything imaginable to increase fossil fuel use and kill solar or wind initiatives. He’s made it harder to sue insurance companies that, I know this is hard to believe – balk at paying insurance claims and routinely screw people. He also plays an outsize role in heating the Gulf which is now swallowing the state as woke climate change boils it.

DeSantis won a majority. Floridians voted for him, they believe him. They ban books in Florida. They have election police and petition police and abortion police, believe slavery was a learning experience for Africans and are threatening criminal action against TV stations that air pro-abortion commercials. Their minimum wage is less than $13 an hour and they initiated “Stand Your Ground” laws, which basically legalizes murder, but almost only if it’s a Black man being shot to death. It’s increased homicide rates by more than 30 per cent but who’s counting?

Do they deserve to be drowned? Of course not. Do the Canadiens, one of the sports world’s most familiar and loved franchises, deserve to lose to the Leafs. Of course not.

But where is CNN? Standing on a walkway or street corner, ducking road signs and, clothes plastered to them by wind and rain, trying to get us to worry which of them will be airlifted to Kansas without benefit of an airplane.

Now, I only watched a bit during commercials in the hockey game, but I didn’t see anyone interviewing any real people as to how they were doing, what they were fearing, would they be able to eat tomorrow.

Maybe CNN can cover hockey the same way, have a journalist and a camera man stand at centre ice, dodging player, sticks and pucks and report on the game. Every once in a while, one will get steamrolled or a puck in the head and Wolf Blitzer will say “thanks and stay safe out there” before he cuts to five minutes of commercials.

It will end boring games. It will be about reporters trying to stay alive in an environment no sane person belongs. Instead of the game or the hurricane, it’s about the reporters wiping water from their faces and dodging bullets or pucks or flying sailboats. And ads for happy people using Semaglutide regardless of the 100 incumbent warnings. Hockey players take abuse. They want to stay in the big leagues. Reporters stand on a walkway looking at the sea, with a microphone, hoping for that promotion to a warm, dry studio in Atlanta before their mother calls and asks, “What’s wrong with you?”

At CNN, a hurricane's not anymore of a disaster than a hockey game. Just a tale of trying to be tough under inhuman circumstances and providing good pictures.

It’s just television.