Mean Hurricane Dean
There was a fantastic “if it weren’t so tragic you’d have to laugh” moment on the ITV news the other night as they covered the continuing destruction of Hurricane Dean. As the storm grew closer to Mexico’s Yucatan coast, the ITN team had a plucky reporter complete with plastic mac and sou’wester reporting from one of the huge hotels on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. Cue lots of long shots of crashing waves, windswept palm trees, etc. At the end of the report, plucky reporter hands back to the studio where the anchor comes out with the classic line (and I’m paraphrasing here) – “Thanks to XXXXX in Cancun, Mexico, where tonight tourists are praying that Hurricane Dean hits the coast away from them – they may be in luck as current forecasts predict it will reach land 100 miles south of the tourist resort…”
Yeah, nice one! As long as it misses the hotels and all-inclusives then sod the natives… Happily, Dean’s damage wasn’t as bad as predicted in the end, but it really does beggar belief that a few pampered tourists are somehow far bigger news than the thousands of people who live on the Mexican coast who faced having their lives torn apart by a force of nature. Shades of “Dundee Man Feared Lost” I suppose…
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