Ocracoke in Danger Due to Mirror-like Qualities

That's the island on the outer banks which is accessible only by ferry, boat or other means which need no road or bridge.

Now that a hurricane is looming in the distance they are evacuating. No surprise there. What is a surprise is that the Associated Press never ceases to outdo itself in its endless quest to confuse, dumb-down and generally bring incompetence to new levels.

How do AP writers manage to get a job? News language has long been a little different and rife with bizarre and inapplicable metaphor, not to mention that if you were ever close to a story personally, you were aware that the reporting mangled fact and quote---it never fails. It is almost as if they purposely do that, like it is a compulsion.

Anyway, according to AP, here is why Ocracoke and the Outer Banks are particularly vulnerable to hurricanes:

All the barrier islands have the geographic weakness of jutting out into the Atlantic like the side-view mirror of a car, a location that's frequently been in the path of destructive storms over the decades. emphasis mine. Does that mean that the side view mirror of a car is a location "that's frequently been in the path of destructive storms over the decades" ? Well, I suppose that is true if the car was outside or you drive in hurricanes. (I'm not Shakespeare, but this writer really sucks)

Jee Suss H Keeryst!!! The side view mirror of a car? Stick to talking about Florida, Champ. Even you might get that one halfway right.

Yep. I drove over bridges and then took a ferry to the side view mirror of North Carolina.

View Larger Map

See Ocracoke out there to the right of the mainland? (bottom center of map)
Do you see anything that just smacks of side view mirror on a car?
This is the trouble when people live their entire lives in NYC or some such place, and never actually draw the connections between nature and life; like cow=steak, tree=wooden chair, etc. They yearn to be colorful artistic writers of newslike fiction, but they have little reference with which to compare things like islands in the sea. Now they could compare restaurants, subway lines, and things like that.

I'll bet the writer doesn't even drive. He or she probably got nailed by a side view mirror one night, while walking on a crowded sidewalk trying to catch a cab home from Club Spankme. I've bumped into side view mirrors myself, in less urban settings. That was what the writer termed, "an aha! moment". Ever since he/she heard the phrase, aha moment, he/she had been dying to have one so he/she could then say, "and that was my aha moment!". So the old side view mirror had been boiling in that pot on the back burner of it/he/she's mind ever since, just waiting fora chance to come to the fore to clarify a news story. And boy, did it!.


I really want a job with AP. Fact doesn't matter, logic is irrelevant and I can compare anything to anything. It is like sleeping with a dust pan in a gold mine, while stalking the wild grizzly with a grain of salt.