Friday, December 28, 2012

Everything But...

CBS Evening News did an interesting follow-up piece on a victim of Hurricane Sandy the other night. The original clip showed an elderly woman searching through the ashes of her burned home and finding the shard of a plate, all that she was able to recover, and taking it home as a treasured memory of her former comfort. What once was a home filled with treasures and memories was reduced not only to a plate, but merely to a piece of a plate. I’m paraphrasing, but it was a real tearjerker.

The follow-up was an interview to see how she was doing now. People had “been very kind,” she said, and had been sending contributions and giving her things. One woman from another state had even found a plate identical to the one that had been shown in part on the original news item and had sent it to her, so now she had the entire plate. How touching is that? More tears all around, only of joy this time; she has gifts, contributions and an intact plate identical to the one she lost.

Am I being cruel with my sarcasm here? Well, they started the piece by saying that she was a “woman who had lost almost everything.” Please notice the “almost” in that, because it turns out they were not referring to a broken piece of one plate. They began the interview by saying that, “We met her at a family home that she owns and had been renting out.”

How many people lost everything and wound up homeless after Sandy? And they choose to do an interview and a follow-up with a woman who is living in a second home that she owns in addition to the one that was destroyed. Seriously? She’s living in her own second home, and they are interviewing her instead of some family who is in a shelter or living on the street? You have to be kidding me.

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