Watching Katrina on the BBC

There’s something surreal about sitting in a hotel room in Kanazawa monitoring the progress of Hurricane Katrina on the BBC. No familiar faces like Geraldo are in evidence clinging theatrically to a tree for “dear life” while giving us a blow by blow of impending doom, but instead the usual array of “news readers” along with pretty decent on location coverage from New Orleans. Of course, it’s impossible to tell how serious the storm is (serious enough, I’m sure) but that’s always the case. The Brits do disasters well, far better than they do geo-politics. Listening to their coverage of Iraq is another matter. But we all know about that.