Asymmetrical Information

Come on Jane. You know why it's on the news. It's so we can all collectively laugh at the few people who are so rich and have so much time on their hands that they could go on a cruise last week while we were all working for our paychecks.

It's the same reason the Taco Bell episode is all over the news. The people who got sick all seemed to have enough spare change, free time, and dietary stupidity to have grabbed a bite at the Bell.

If the trend keeps up, we'll soon be making a public spectacle out of people who contract STDs while the rest of us are working.

Yep, there are a number of templates that are used over and over for the news. Among them:

How The Mighty Have Fallen.
Lowlifes On Parade.
You Could Be Next.
What An Awful (Wonderful) World We Live In, Eh?
Just Like You Thought.

There are more, but those would account for a majority of what appears on the local evening newscast most nights.

What's that old television newsroom saying?

"If it bleeds, it leads"

Or in this case, "If it spews, it's news"

"Why is this on the news?!!"

Why not?

The ultimate sources (Slate isn't news) were an AP wire story and a local South Florida paper. AP is likely to cover anything that could be news to anybody, and the South Florida local has a compelling interest in hundreds of people with flu-like symptoms being disgorged into its community when the ship docks.

I don't know why Slate would bother with it, but since they publish Hitchens, there isn't really any point to expecting any rationality from them.

I'm just thankful that Slate didn't blame Bush for the "cruise ship trots". Since the election, it seems that just about every article they publish falls into three categories:

-Bush sucks!
-Every problem in the world is Bush's fault!
-Bush is stupid. And he sucks!

Today's feature article is that Bush's daughters suck. Earlier this week, Bush got his pre-war intel from James Bond.

Wow. The shark called~ he'll be over in a few minutes.

As a conservative, I have long enjoyed reading Kinsley's articles. He made me think out my position, and horror of horrors, occasionally he showed me where I was wrong. Alas! Those days are long gone and Slate has become the printed version of the Daily Show. Without humor. Without intelligence. Without relevance.

Hitch is a breath of fresh air. Well, a breath of chain-smoking, gin soaked, British ex-pat air at any rate. Without him and Kaus, Slate is a waste of bandwidth.

Notice To Slate Dudes: YOU WON. It's time to stop name calling and come up with answers.

I just think its funny that people would find it surprising enough that a ship with 400 tourists travelling around the carribean would get sick to make it newsworthy. I'd be surprised if they didn't. I've sailed in the navy, and when one person gets sick, the whole ship does. If one of 400 tourists gets sick, don't be surprised that the rest do!

I'm going to be the devils advocate. A lot of those cruise ship incidents happened right after 9/11, and I was always surprised that there was no investigation into why all these passengers on multiple liners were getting sick. Far fetched, I know, but I still was intrigued. I'm glad someone finally figured out why.

Reese Abright, a medical student when I knew him, later head of Child Psychiatry at St. Vincent's in NY, said to me re: medical school, "What we're learning everybody would want to know." Well, this is probably an averagely interesting medical factoid, infectious disease type. Reese, the crowd seems to disagree. News because most people probably think, 'Money to burn. Go on a cruise. Rath of G-d may be a problem; facts to outwit or understand this?'

qdqwd

Gates Wins Unanimous Senate Committee Approval as Defense Secretary

Why are the comments in gray text? To whom is decreased readability considered a virtue?

It's not news. It's explanatory journalism. Hence the slug "The Explainer." Not every feature has to be about something earth-shattering. Some things are just there to satisfy the reader's curiosity.

dear brad, commentator #1,

what does your working working working for a living have to do with it?

i suppose i might see your resenting "rich" cruise-goers (though, *not, really), but

why on earth be so nasty about what happened to the people who ate at taco bell?

you know, that oh-so-exclusive place where the idle rich dawdle over lunch while you are working working working --

Sil, I think you need to take your irony meter to the shop for repairs.

Think of the fun Gale Storm and Zasu Pitts could have had with this on The Gale Storm Show, Oh Susanna.

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