Responding to my Fox column someone pointed me to this James Wolcott blog entry from a few months ago. It was a stupid thing to write then. In light of recent headlines, it makes him look like a particularly skanky piece of dung today:

I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own. Sure, a hearty volcano can be enjoyable. Burning rivers of lava: so picturesque. But a volcano is stationary, like Dennis Hastert after a big lunch. It doesn’t offer the same dramatic suspense. Hurricanes are in unpredictable flux. They move, change direction, strengthen, weaken, lose an eyewall, repair an eyewall; they seem to have volition and opera-diva personalities.

So there’s something disappointing when a hurricane doesn’t make landfall, or peters out into a puny Category One.

I guess 100,000+ dead in South Asia must’ve given Wolcott reason to pop his New Year’s champagne early.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 30th, 2004 at 10:31 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.