Muammar Al Khadafi

"...and their wailing cries,
they shook the very Heavens.
My four green fields,
ran red with their blood,
said she...."

Tommy Makem
Four Green Fields

Haiti.

One of those moments where you step back...pause...and then time and sound disappear as you raise your hand to your mouth to silence the inane prattle that was about to come out of it.

One of those moments where the world changes, once again.

We saw, we felt - and then we watched...kinda like 9/11 - 'cept without the drama of the villainy but on a far grander scale.

Reports put the casualty figure between 50,000 to 200,000.

We watched Pat Robertson crawl out of a hole and belabor the fact that they had made a pact with the devil.

The con-artists pulled their feet off their desks and went to Def-Con 2.

We then watched our President walk out - very regally, I might add - and promise some insane amount of money...almost as if to say,

"Take THAT, Canada!"

...and then the world was right as rain again because these events must transpire to make us feel, once again, secure in ourselves.

Within an hour, there was raw video footage on YouTube.

There were bodies, blood and anguish...all a little mouse click away.

In all of this, however, the press didn't miss a beat, did they?

On MSN's homepage, they actually had the link to the earthquake story in smaller letters and below the HD picture of what J-Lo was wearing at some awards thingy.

The fact that these two stories shared the same page bordered on bein' obscene.

My local newspaper had the story on page six. On the front page was a rather large picture of a man wearing 3-D glasses, with accompanying headline,

"Is 3-D Overrated?"

At first, I thought that they mustn't have had the story in time for copy...but...there on page six...was the Port-Au-Prince capital palace in shambles.

This was alarming, to say the least.

Are we becoming that desensitized to pain and suffering?

Has our beloved media made us this way?

In 1976, Chevy Chase uttered some prophetic words on Weekend Update that are ringin' in my ears today...

"Next up,...earthquake claims Turkey.
The state of Texas swallowed by large sink-hole...
and Arlene visits an art museum!"

Not too far off the mark.

(Pause)

It's enough to make you really resent the fact that you were born a human being, ya know?

Of course, I include myself in this analogy.

It wasn't a mere two hours later...two hours after learning of this catastrophe...that was I standing in Burger King lamenting that they had stopped sellin' cheesy tots. I was livid because I was not gonna get my cheesy potato joyness fix for the day...in spite of all the suffering that was goin' on...south of the border.

I have become a simple minded minion who sees his creature comfort as bein' the only priority.

I have continued on with life, without missing a beat, and have carried on in the quest of protecting - and hiding in - my little corner of the world. I engage in conversations that are trite...and have been rendered guilty for using this story as a simple segue to the question,

"Does this sweatshirt make me look fat?"

It seems that the press has become jaded...but is it because we have become more jaded? Are we simply mirroring what is known about us...and are they just doin' their duty by reflecting it back on us? Have they made us into who we currently are? Has the alleged "War On Terror" made us this lot who simply rolls with the punches and shrugs our shoulders when another country is laid to waste?

On 9/11, it seemed that every last corner of newsprint, airwaves and Internet was saturated with the events that took place in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. It took the networks almost a week before they started airing commercials again...yet, here we are...with a death toll that is unimaginable...and that story is almost rivaling the Leno/O'Brien time-slot story.

(I must confess that it took me almost a week for me to feel the impact about the lives lost on 9/11....and that was with the luxury of the media barrage.)

I can honestly admit, however, that my first inclination, when I first heard about Haiti, was to tally up my vacation time and place a few phone calls to people in prominent positions, in an attempt to ascertain the facts about whether or not a relief effort was being organized in my sphere of connections.

Sadly, there was none.

I thought, even if they simply needed a strong back, I could be there.

Unfortunately, the airport was destroyed and there were no planes goin' in.

I then simply went back to my life. I don't contribute money to these efforts...mainly because I don't have any...

So there you have it.

"Show's over, people....go back to your lives...."

It just doesn't seem like it's enough, though.

If nothing else, the media could at least stroke our collective conscience and give this catastrophe the attention it deserves. Put it in the forefront of our simple heads, instead of the story,

"Why are my hands always so cold"?

It's like we are engaged in this huge, global basketball game.

Countries play each other. Sometimes friendly, other times aggressively...and Haiti is that one player that is smaller and doesn't quite have the chops that other players have - no real adversarial force there - but he's kinda cool because he always has some real kick-ass clothes...;but, the bottom line is, we play with him because Papa told us to.....

He just fell on the court and busted his head wide open. We don't just throw him a towel.

We stop the freakin' game and make sure he's alright, man.

Media-wise, this should not be "business as usual".

I don't fault the relief effort. I fault the way it is covered.

(Pause)

Anyway,....