For a couple days now a news story has been rumbling around CNN's various incarnations. It really makes me wonder what producers are thinking. Picture this:
A bunch of cute, cuddly animals that are nearly-as-intelligent-as-us-so-we-learn-about-nature-from-them-better find themselves in the midst of an aquarium in the midst of a hurricane. Like most of the region, their house is destroyed. Soon they find themselves helpless, adrift in the sea and unable to fend for themselves because they have been thoroughly domesticated. Who will come to their aid? Will they recapture them in time before all the mean nasty sharks get them? How heroic those searching must be to find them in the midst of the vastness of an ocean...it's almost as noble as the quest for the Holy Grail.
And now they've found them...only rescuing the two most sickly and transporting them (not kidding) in a DolphinMobile to a Holiday Inn pool with the help of a police escort. The seas becaame too choppy to rescue the rest and we can only pray that they can survive a couple more days.
Now what, please tell me, is this doing as one of the main things in the news? Why is some news crew wasting their time with this when so many more heroic and meaningful things are going on? CNN has had a whole host of sort of tongue-in-cheek newscasts over the years, crazy did-you-know stories from across the nation. In my opinion this sort of thing really shouldn't be on the major news networks. It's too glib...flavor stories designed to make you crack a small smile. While its good to take things less seriously, its not good when professional journalists prioritize it over other more important news and investigative journalism.
Way to go flipper! You're as important news as insurance companies refusing to pay people in the NOLA area.
2 comments:
Hey man, don't diss flipper! =)
Crazy what people will write about, huh?
Further internet research has provided:
South of Miami on US 1 is Grassy Key, one of the islands of the Florida Keys, At mile marker 59, on the Gulf side, stands a 30-foot concrete statue of a mother and baby dolphin. This marks the entrance to the Dolphin Research Center (DRC) http://www.dolphins.org, a facility devoted to education and public awareness. It is also the final resting place of the most famous dolphin ever -- Mitzi, better known to the world by her stage name, Flipper.
You will probably been surprised to learn that Flipper was a female. A male stunt dolphin, Mr. Gipper, did all of Flipper's tail-walking. But the dolphin who nudged wayward boats to safety, knocked guns out of poachers' hands with well-timed leaps, and warned Bud and Sandy whenever danger lurked, was a lady.
Back in the early sixties, the DRC was known as Santini's Porpoise School. Milton Santini, a pioneer in dolphin husbandry and training, ran it. Mitzi, who was Santini's first pupil, was picked to star as Flipper in the original movie (with "Branded star" Chuck Connors), which was filmed at the School.
Mitzi made the film and the TV series a hit, and she became a big celebrity at Grassy Key. When she died of a heart attack, she was buried beneath a dolphin statue in the School's courtyard. The DRC maintains the grave, and in her honor they always make it the first stop on the tour. A small plaque reads:
Dedicated to the memory of Mitzi
The original Flipper
1958 -1972
Mitzi left no children but Mr. Gipper did. His daughter, Tursi, is also a fine tail-walker.
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