The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Five Passengers Set Sail That Day for a Three-Hour Tour … a Three-Hour Tour’

Posted on | June 22, 2023 | Comments Off on ‘Five Passengers Set Sail That Day for a Three-Hour Tour … a Three-Hour Tour’

Why did the Gilligan’s Island theme song come to mind when I was watching TV report the loss of the OceanGate Titan?

The U.S. Coast Guard has confirmed that the debris found of the Titanic tourist submersible Titan “is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.” All passengers of the Titan are presumed to have died.
In a press conference on Thursday, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard said, “The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.”
The debris found included parts of the sub’s pressure chamber, including a nose cone and the front and back end of the pressure hull.
The debris was located 1,600 feet from the Titanic’s bow, but it could not have come from the Titanic itself, according to Mauger.
Mauger said the implosion “would have generated significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up.”
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor, and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Mauger stated.
He added that they would try to recover the bodies of the passengers, stating, “we’ll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time.”
OceanGate Expeditions, which operated the Titan, issued a statement acknowledging the deaths of the five passengers of the submersible, which began its descent into the North Atlantic on Sunday to visit the wreck site of the RMS Titanic, but lost contact with the surface less than two hours later.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” the company stated.

Dying in a “catastrophic implosion” is obviously much worse than being stranded on an “uncharted desert isle,” and I mean no disrespect to Stockton Rush, who I’m sure was a “mighty sailing man.”

My irreverent (some would say tasteless) sense of humor routinely got me in trouble during my school days, but you may be shocked to learn that mine was not the worst take on this deep-sea catastrophe.

The New Republic has since deleted the tweet, but the article is still online, with the implication that Stockton Rush deserved to die because he’d donated to Republican campaigns. Of course, one can be critical of this kind of high-end tourism, and I was (“As a Commentary on Our Decadent Elite, the Missing Luxury Sub Is Near Perfect”), but it never occurred to me to research the political affiliations of those involved.

Yet as bad as The New Republic‘s take was, it was not actually the worst. That honor was claimed by MSNBC personality Elie Mystal.



 

 

Category: Media Bias

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