Here we are, 4 years after the Katrina Disaster, and the first hurricanes to pose any serious threat to gulf coast communities have finally arrived. This was, of course, inevitable, and the networks seem to have been prepared for the day when such media frenzy could be justified again. As Hanna, Fay, and Gustav blew into town relatively uneventfully, I began to think the press might get over themselves. That their dripping wet lust for disaster would subside after the first few near misses. But now, with Ike ready to make landfall upon the gulf shores of Texas, I can see that I was wrong.

I’m out and about in Brooklyn today, and every commercial establishment I’ve entered has had a different network tuned to their flatscreen, and every one has featured wall-to-wall coverage of the hurricane. Could it be that the mass media truly cares about the fate of these communities? That would be easier to believe if they’d spent the last 4 years devoting a small measure of coverage to the changes (or lack thereof) in FEMA’s operating procedures, or the emergency preparations of at-risk communities. So, one is obliged to deduce that this year’s hurricane season is just another of what is (so vulgarly and appropriately) referred to in New York as an ad fuck.

But, is it the networks’ fault that disaster is so lucrative? We consumers don’t have to pay attention to this. But, we do, and so I think about the way in which we collectively affect the quality of content in the mass media… and the way it affects us. This insidious, clockwork orange in which we all thrive like parasites, souring the fruit that has so much potential. This society.

There are those, of course, who would blame the universally evil “corporation” for this. But those people are part of the problem. They shut their eyes to the fact that all corporations are run by living, breathing people. The establishments which are the instruments of their mass-marketed theater are just that– instruments. It always goes back to people. To human beings and what we’re capable of. To offer up any kind of scapegoat to replace recognition of that fundamental truth is, to my mind, just as insidious. In fact, maybe more.