Every winter in Ohio,

weathermen broke into regular programming with

"weather emergencies." White death, or snow, to

you Southerners, was imminent in our area. They would

advise people to stay home, stock up on supplies and to

make sure that they were profoundly frightened. As we all

barricaded ourselves in our houses, the snow lightly

dusted the ground and the next day the weathermen would

giggle and say they were sorry for the miscalculation.

We got lucky. Again. I was

never scared of snow, but these emergencies would scare

old people into an abnormal frenzy. Imagine a television

network reporting an imminent nuclear attack, how could

they convey a message of true importance when they have

already wasted all of their drama on an inch of snow.

This brings me to our

current emergency. I was watching a football game, when

one of the kids "accidentally" turned the

channel looking for MTV. During the ensuing channel

surfing, we stumbled upon the Weather Channel. Our

attention was grabbed suddenly, a man on a beach wearing

disaster clothes, talking and acting like he had just

seen the Space Shuttle just blow up.

"What is going on,

Dad?" my son exclaimed. "Did the President

drown?" I was as perplexed as my youngster, but my

best guess was that Miss Lewinsky had been arrested by

the fashion police for having way too much posterior and

even entertaining the thought of wearing a thong.

Meanwhile, we were glued to

the screen, attempting to find out what all of the

commotion was all about. Floyd was coming. Floyd was

coming. These modern day Paul Reveres were sounding the

alarm that the greatest storm in the history of the world

was bearing down on the Southeastern United States.

Bigger than Hugo, more powerful than Andrew and more

destructive than my 20-month-old son, Montana.

Now don't get me wrong, I

have great respect for Mother Nature and the destructive

abilities of hurricanes. However, the intensity and panic

with which these newspeople spoke momentarily made me

think of evacuating Peachtree City for the safety of

Newnan.

Again, people need to be

informed about an oncoming storm; however, this was

overkill. Every 15 minutes in Atlanta we had updates,

color pictures and interviews with the weather-geeks at

the National Hurricane Center. I found it laughable that

during all of the roving reports from the beach there

were always people frolicking all over the beach. Are

these people just idiots playing volleyball and

sunbathing or are they the levelheaded people not

convinced that the sky was falling?

Warning is good. Scaring is

bad. Our friends in North Carolina are feeling the

effects of this storm and people should be prepared for

emergencies. However, with every alarm that doesn't pan

out, people become a little less likely to heed future

warnings.

The television networks, in

their quest for ratings, abandon all rational thought and

magnify every event out of proportion. Let's hope when a

real emergency occurs we all haven't become numb to

warnings. However, with the media's overkill of daily

events, that's just what we run the risk of doing.

Keith Mobley

Peachtree City

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