I would love to blog about current events and happenings, but every media person in Pittsburgh is sitting at or around Mercy Hospital. If you don't know why, go here. The accident happened before noon today. The newscasters broke into programming and pre-empted most of the early afternoon programming in order to stand near the Armstrong tunnels and show a mangled motorcycle and a car with a busted windshield. I'm almost certain downtown shut down today with people pouring out of the buildings screaming and crying and waving their hands in the air. According to my podmate, the churches were full of people gnashing their teeth and rending their garmets. I want to say that I'm joking but if you were anywhere near the epicenter of this "breaking story" you'd begin to question what was real and what wasn't. Through the grapevine I've heard stories of injuries that they're keeping from the public, a nurse in on the surgery who stopped to break all the privacy laws by emailing her address book that she was about to go into surgery for Ben. The helmet stories have already started and it wouldn't surprise me if Harrisburg convened an emergency session and the helmet law was re-enacted before the day is done.
Honestly I hope the guy is alright. And my reasons for that are two-fold. One, I'm a fairly nice guy and would hate to see for anyone to be seriously hurt and two, I don't know how much more of this I can take. The federal government could have released a story about Dick Cheney shooting half of congress on a hunting trip while George Bush personally pushed the button and nuked Iran, Iraq and France and it wouldn't have even played before the first commercial on the Western Pennsylvania news. Hell, it might not have even led on most national channels the way this story was snowballing. MSN had four links about it on their homepage alone. I wonder what other kind of story can generate this blinding storm of publicity to the point where I actually heard a newscaster say "A car has left the Steelers practice facility. It may or may not contain Mr. Rooney and it may or may not be headed to the hospital."