If the power was out...

[dropzone]

...why the fuck was Dan Rather pleading that people not start looting? Was I expected to start looting in Chicago, unwise since we are operating at full power around here? Or get in my car and drive 400 mile so I could loot someplace where the power was out? Or was he talking to the people in the affected areas via the TV receivers implanted in their brains?

The power's out, Kenneth. Nobody is watching you there.

[shmigheghi]

Couldn't hurt. Some people might have had generators.

[Lobsang]

If threads could generate power...

[dropzone]

But did the TV transmitters have generators, too?

[shmigheghi]

I repeat my first point. Couldn't hurt.

[Lobsang]

Originally posted by shmigheghi
I repeat my first point. Couldn't hurt.

Ah, but what if some madman, who was holding someone at gunpoint said - "If the person on TV says the words 'not' and 'looting' I am going to pull the trigger"

[Nanoda]

Because reporting the worst is a popular past-time of U.S. news stations. I'd heard about the power outage fairly early, but it wasn't until much later when I checked online that I found that terrorism was on everybody's minds. Even super-huge power outages don't foster that type of thinking in me...

[freetobeme]

They even dubebd it the 2003 East Coast Power Outage or some such thing as in 'We'll return to the 2003 East Coast Power Outage after these messages'.

I think Dan was talking to the looters from 1977.

[Exgineer]

The impression I got was that most reporters were actually hoping for some good old fashioned looting and rioting so they'd have something more exciting to report than "people are just patiently waiting for the power to come on."

Danny-boy was really saying "please, please give us some more news."

[MrMyth]

Not only that, but here are multipe cameramen filming passengers trapped in fucking subway trains. If it were me, I'd be getting sued right about now for smashing every TV camera in a five block radius. I mean, here I am, underground and locked in a rapidly heating metal coffin, and I see a light appear outside......

Salvation? Nope, just fucking Action News. Grrr.

[dropzone]

And why was this worth a whole evening of ABC's broadcast schedule, other than I can't remember anything they would've been broadcasting except, I presume, a 20-20 rerun? "(P)eople ... just patiently waiting for the power to come on" are not remotely interesting. Neither are man-on-the-street interviews with people whose feet hurt from walking or who are saying that they were going to skip work on Friday. Even Bloomberg, when he asked people to stay home today, admitted that telling people to take an August Friday off wasn't a hard sell.

"How is this like 9/11?" Even NPR was asking questions like that. Sorry, folks, BUT IT WASN'T REMOTELY LIKE 9/11!!!!! It was like a blizzard except with better weather. Maybe shoe stores weren't giving Nikes to women in heels or the street vendors were selling bottled water at the regular price to thirsty commuters rather than giving it away but that doesn't make them profiteers. WEATHER HAPPENS and if you aren't prepared for it you pay the buck for a bottle of water!

Finally, OUTSIDE OF THE NEW YORK CITY AREA NOBODY GIVES TWO SHITS ABOUT NEW YORK CITY! Sorry, those of you who feel it is the center of the universe, but we really, truly don't care. We felt bad about 9/11 but that doesn't mean we care about your weather or electricity any more than we do about that of Cleveland or Toronto or any other town or hamlet affected by this blackout. And I don't expect the people of those areas caring if we had a blackout in Chicago. IT'S NO BIG DEAL!

[Ceejaytee]

We were listening to the radio as we were attempting to get out of Newark (NBC news) and the newsperson was listing some of the cities where the power was out. Cities that were not affected by the power outage were "Boston, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and the West Coast." She repeated this several times in the hour it took us to get home to Union County.

Even disregarding the fact that the "West Coast" isn't a city, was it such a suprise that power was not out 3,000 miles away?