Partially Cloudy Offensive

The other night I was watching the war with my wife and baby daughter — like we’ve been doing for the last few weeks — and I came to the conclusion that the strangest aspect of the whole thing for me was not the CNN animations, nor was it the fact that Al-Jazeera has hot undraped correspondants, nor was it the constant barrage of ex-military commentary.

No, the strangest part of the was coverage for me was the weather.

Both the Weather Channel and CNN in particular have been covering the weather as if there was no war going on at all. Without the least bit of fanfare or transition, some news meteorologist glides in front of a chroma-keyed map of Iraq with her thumb button where she begins gesturing to a high pressure ridge descending from Turkey.

These reports go something like this: “In Karbala, today there will be a slight change of precipitation, and in the capitol of Baghdad we’ll see overcast skies until just after noon, when the low lying clouds will burn off. Highs in Baghdad will be in the mid-to upper 90s.”

All this complete with icons of the sun partially hidden by fluffy cartoon clouds and a computer generated map that whooses past like the map of the Colorado ski areas.

It’s almost too much.

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