BREAKING NEWS:
I am an unabashed ‘Media Junkie,’
but the last months have been incredible, over-the-top excitement, even for
me! Big Screen TV’s must now, and
hereafter, be sold with an accompanying, never-emptying, box of Kleenex
attached.
After watching 24/7 on our big
screens and on our computers, the governments of almost the entire Arab world
begin to topple, one by one like dominoes, beginning in mid-January (yes, my
son is finally home safe from his two-month work stint in Dubai), the
unbelievably tragic Biblical Trifecta of Horror befell Japan, and we all sat in
awe of Mother Nature and her non-stop, real-time fury. The heartbreaking Japan story pushed the
Mess in Libya off the Media’s front stoop for only a few days, however. Last week, incredibly, the UN, US, and our
newly cobbled-together Coalition of Allies (including 2 jets from Quatar!)
combined for a show that we watched something unprecedented (since the year I
was born) happen, with jaws dropped .
Seemingly overnight, the UN pushed
through a No Fly Zone Resolution over Libya, in the face of certain
annihilation of the Rebels holed up in Benghazi there! This, over Russia and China’s abstentions
(NOT vetoes; remember, that’s how the Korean War, or ‘Conflict,’ began – some
Russian diplomat missed the veto there, and now, here – and, Putin is not happy
about it). Then, late last week: War in
Libya! The Media was at the ready with graphics
for both
War in Libya and Disaster in Japan, and since, we have endlessly
switched back and forth, first, all last weekend amid the rain deluge which
made all our satellite systems, first go slightly psychedelic, then,
intermittently lose their signals, if we had continuous electric power in our
houses, that is. And, this week, there
is no end of news from either. As a
self-styled amateur historian (without portfolio), I cannot remember a time
when two massive stories dueled like this for top spot attention.
The news from Japan is beyond our
worst nightmares. With nuclear power
plants situated at Diablo Canyon, north of LA, and San Onofre, south of LA, we
now rightly ask: can it happen here, amid many millions trying to simply live
their lives and stay afloat in this economy?
Last night, I watched one of the many nuclear energy experts patiently
explain (as scientists are wont to do) that the Indian Point nuclear plant,
north of NYC, is close enough to the many millions inhabiting the Five
Burroughs there that, if the US-endorsed evacuation zone of 50 miles in
northern Japan were enforced in a disaster north of NYC, there would simply be
no way to get 20 million souls in greater NYC out of harm’s way. Correctly, we are using this opportunity to
re-visit our own nuclear safety concerns as, like with NASA’s Space Shuttle disasters,
we must learn from each failure how to make nuclear energy generation safer
still, despite redundant safeguards upon redundant safeguards (imagine ‘belts
and suspenders,’ going off into the sunset).
Turning to Libya, I cannot explain
WHY we are doing this, and neither can most others, but I did see Lieut. Gen.
Honore (he of New Orleans Disaster fame) explain it succinctly this morning: he
said that we have a moral obligation as a free nation to prevent other nations
from killing their own citizens in droves and that, therefore, we cannot sit
idly by. But, the War in Libya
(apparently brought to you by Hillary, Susan Rice [our UN Ambassador] and one
other prominent female State Dept figure – the
first Female Involved War since those Ladies of Ancient Troy all had headaches,
perhaps?), is causing seismic fracture zones among our elected
officials. Some Republicans are
supporting the intervention while some Far Left Democrats are calling for
Obama’s impeachment. Will political
wonders never cease?!?
I do not mean to make light here of
any of the horrendous human suffering that we are witnessing daily on our TV’s
and computers, in either Japan or Libya – far from it. Despite three weeks of that nagging head cold
that seems to never go away and just keeps coming back for more (I appeared
yesterday morning in our downtown Los Angeles Superior Court – the one you see
in the old Perry Mason black and white TV show – in a courtroom packed with
coughing and sneezing lawyers and judges), I cannot stop watching. It is
the proverbial trainwreck or car accident which we are ashamed to admit that we
cannot prevent ourselves from slowing down to take a look at, playing out
simultaneously, on two sides of this ever-increasingly connected world in which
we live.
I will not profess to venture
whether Japan’s agonies will resolve without a Chernobyl-style,
hundreds-of-square-mile-clearing-for-the-foreseeable-future, tragedy of epic
proportions. I also have no idea what
the proposed end-game in Libya could be, either. But, I am glued . . . .