Wet Dog

February 19, 2003

This morning the new secretary of Homeland Defense Tom Ridge was giving a press conference unveiling the newly launched site for civil preparedness.

Suddenly most of the TV screen was taken by the broadcast of an ongoing rescue of a dog stuck in ice on a NJ river, delegating the ongoing press conference to a small square in the corner of the screen. I thought it was quite strange that the news channel deemed more important the rescue of a pet than issues dealing with national security. If the media is a mirror of our society then we must really suffer from short attention span.