Irene

Living in the northeast, I naturally have respect for a Category 1 hurricane.

What kills me as I search for an accurate news account of the storm's approach, is how canned and scripted the media is. The "story" is a devastating Category 4 hurricane that is threatening to topple the Empire State Building, while the reality is a Category 1 hurricane that will quickly become a tropical storm once it gets beyond Connecticut's shore.

The news readers aren't even aware of how ridiculous they sound when they conflate the reality of a large but weakening storm and the rhetoric of a killer storm crafted by their writers 72 hours ago.

The news media really sucks.

Updated: The Empire State Building still stands, but western MA, and Vermont are reeling from the flooding. Months of re-building ahead in those areas.