CNN's Wolf Blitzer Embarrassed On Camera by Atheist

Image from source, Raw Story

As an atheist, I can get tripped up on language, so I shouldn't be too hard on Wolf Blitzer. I had to train myself to say gesundheit when somebody sneezes, rather than "god bless you." But not all nearly automatic religious phrases are so easy to extract from the vocabulary. There are so many, most people probably don't even realize they come from the Bible. "Oh, god," and "Jesus Christ" are just the most obvious ones. But then, I'm not a high-paid journalist on CNN, I'm a hobbyist blogger.

What Blitzer does in this clip is make the assumption that if you are from Oklahoma, you must be a Christian. And while it is kind of the default there, and in much of America, it's not something you should assume. It's like assuming that the person you are talking to is heterosexual, it's not always the case, and could be embarrassing, depending upon the question. Anyway, part of Blitzer's mindset may have been that so many people when commenting upon a tragedy automatically resort to "prayer."

Whether it's a sincere belief that it will somehow do some good, or it's just a reflexive thing to say, "I'm sending my prayers" and similar phrases just filled Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the news channels*. Most people probably mean well, and surely some are in the same situation as I am, with a religion-saturated mental English phrase book. It has something to do with why I haven't blogged about the Oklahoma tornadoes until now. What can I add to this discussion?

Sure, I'm sorry, and it's heartbreaking to see and hear the details of what's going on. I can say "my heart goes out to the survivors," of course, which is exactly as helpful as prayer, which is to say, not much. So, I donated to the Red Cross. And I'm asking you to do it too. It's not even difficult.

Just get out your cell phone, start a new text to 90999 (where you'd ordinarily put a phone number), with the message:  REDCROSS   That will automatically donate $10 to the American Red Cross, and will be added to your phone bill. It literally couldn't be easier.

[Excerpt]

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer tells atheist tornado survivor: ‘You gotta thank the Lord’

With the number of atheists continuing to rise, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday afternoon learned the danger of assuming on live television that his interviewee is a Christian.

“I guess, you gotta thank the Lord, right?” he told the survivor of a deadly tornado that ripped through Oklahoma. “Do you thank the Lord?. . .”

Read more at: Raw Story

*As an aside, I've got to say that I find the notion of prayer in these situations to be hard to fathom. To me, prayer is basically wishing, hoping, begging to get what you want, with the intensity going up according to the direness of the wish. When something good comes to pass (survival, good health, good fortune), "God answered our prayers." When something bad happens, you have to get down on your knees and pray some more. And have people pray for you, even if who you're praying for is already dead, or missing. For the missing, prayer is really perplexing. It's almost like a Schrödinger's cat exercise. Since we don't know whether the missing person is alive or dead, offering up a prayer essentially makes them that cat in the box, and our prayer can decide its fate. When in reality, that person is either really alive or dead. The prayer isn't going to change that. And you're offering these prayers to a deity that is responsible for the natural disaster in the first place! Further, what are the implications of being saved by a prayer, when there is death and devastation all around you? They didn't pray (or have loved ones who prayed for them) hard enough? They weren't worthy? 

So, now maybe you understand why I have such difficulty expressing myself and dealing with others' expressions after tragedies like this. When you are a person who puts "God" (as a concept and a being) on more or less equal footing with Superman and Yosemite Sam, it is difficult  to hear this imaginary being invoked repeatedly as though it does any good. Besides making the person who expresses the sentiment feel better, of course.

Viral Video: Train Vs. Tornado

Thanks to my sister, Jennifer, for sending me this amazing video. It's simultaneously cool, and a little scary. I always loved tornado season in Ohio. Something about the electricity in the air. But it's worth remembering that tornadoes are powerful and dangerous. Oh, and entertaining as you will see below. . .

Hurricane Gustav and Other Natural Disasters

Image from source, Washington Post

Every part of the country seems to have some vulnerability to natural disasters. That's why I get frustrated when I hear people say, "well, why does anybody live there?" One reason is, what's home is home. And whether you have to deal with earthquakes or tornadoes or forest fires or hurricanes or floods, we've all got something.

Even here in Las Vegas, we have drought, though we've managed to survive so far. Outside of that, the occasional localized fire or dust devil are about it. So the scale of a natural disaster lives only in my memories of the strong tornado seasons of the 1970s in Ohio. Xenia was flattened, and we seemed to have dozens of tornado warnings every year for years. But we stayed there.

Hurricanes in particular are quite peculiar in the way they affect us. Unlike earthquakes--where we can only react, or tornadoes, where we have only hours or minutes to prepare--hurricanes give us days of warnings. We can only sit and wait for it to come. Ride it out or flee, you can't stop it from coming, and it seems to plod along on its destructive path.

The most unusual aspect might be the way technology has brought it into our living rooms. In the last few years, there has been a communication convergence of sorts. Multiple channels of 24-hour cable news have become a ubiquitous reality, and so has instant information on the internet. We can know more about what's going on, faster than we ever could before. And yet, the hurricane takes its sweet time. It's a strange combination of anticipation and dread, and you just want it over with, while simultaneously having a morbid curiosity of what is going to happen.

While I am an avowed cynic, have Mark Twain's view of humanity, and am rampantly morbidly curious, I'm still hopeful that Hurricane Gustav wreaks as little damage in property and life as is possible. I also hope that no political party over-hypes or exploits the aftermath to their advantage. But that's a lot of wishing.

To see a particularly interesting interactive map of Gustav and other storms, click here: Washington Post