Boston Bombing: When News is Bogus

The news from Boston was pretty bleak, made bleaker by the efforts of careerist reporters,  who were thrown on television and radio with no news to report, but with hope in their hearts this could be their own big moment.  So they interviewed each other and repeated the words de jour : "Chaos"  and "Heart wrenching" and "Like a war zone"  and "panic."

Which is to say, the news people had no news to report beyond the first three minutes: Two explosions ripped through crowds around the finish line of the Boston marathon after the first wave of (fastest) runners had finished, and at a time when the spectators  lining the street had diminished in number. Had the bombs gone off earlier, casualties would have been higher.  Police are in the early stages of painstaking investigation and really will have nothing to say until they gather evidence and reconstruct and think out what the evidence means, which means we will all just have to wait to learn what happened.

There was alarm and there was surprise, but there was not "chaos,"as far as Mad Dog could see:  Doctors who were in attendance in significant numbers ran straight toward the victims lying across from them, despite the obvious danger, and police reacted with calm and deliberation and the hospitals swung into their well rehearsed "disaster" drills, as they have been trained to do, and patients were transported to the waiting teams  at Mass General, Tufts and Boston Medical center and operating room teams awaited them and treated them, and intensive care units received them, even at Childrens' Hospital, and while many questions remain about who did this, why, and how, what was never in question was the proficiency, efficiency and efficacy of the medical community, one of the nation's best--in Boston--and the calm deliberate and speedy response of the "first responders" the police, fire and rescue. 

As far as Mad Dog can bring to mind, this is the first attack which actually took a toll of civilians since 9/11/2001. There have been thwarted attempts--the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber and the Times Square bomber, but this is the first that went off and killed people since New York, 2001.

Speculation immediately was centered on Middle Eastern terrorists, as it was immediately after the Towers came down in 2001. In the case of the Towers, that speculation was basically on target. Not so clear here, yet.

It must be remembered, Timothy McVeigh fit nobody's profile of a Middle East terrorist. 

As any fan of The Wire knows, there is much that can be learned from a patient, thorough, unhurried examination of the crime scene, done without bias or preconceived notions, just methodical, meticulous and clean. When emotions run high, sometimes the in charge cop has to order everyone out of the area, just to allow those with specific tasks to do their jobs.

Eventually, we will learn more of value, but watching the yammering nabobs on TV Monday, we saw the worst of the  commercial news making machine. They did not serve the nation well.