CNN: America’s Trusted Source For News About Bowel Movements On The High Seas
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I’ve come to a recent conclusion: CNN loves to report on the bathroom activities of people on cruise ships. Specifically, their bowel movements, but sometimes they also report about people’s need to throw up in bathrooms on cruise ships. And like other afflictions detrimental to our society as a whole (crack, heroin, How I Met Your Mother), I can’t get enough of it (okay, minus the crack and the heroin). In fact, a review of my past posts here reveal that this is the third time I have written about this very topic (I couldn’t even come across another topic I wrote about twice let alone three times).
It seems CNN has it out for cruise ships, specifically Royal Caribbean Cruises, although this may be attributed to the fact that Royal Caribbean’s ships tend to be a great home for the norovirus (or as one recent article put it, “Are cruise ships floating petri dishes?”), the notorious virus that often strikes large populations confined to small areas of space (like cruise ships), and which causes nausea, diarrhea, throwing up, and a general need for CNN editors to rush to their keyboards. Granted, I also have it out for cruise ships and think they are the antitheses of travel, but what is the deal with CNN, cruise ships and breaking news about diarrhea aboard them?
In 2010 I wrote about how CNN had called the toilets on a cruise ship a “Tragedy on the High Seas.” In 2013 I reported on a headline that CNN ran about stopped up toilets on a cruise ship. I could go on, but I plan to have lunch soon.
CNN is again doing what they do best, reporting on crap at sea. Last week, CNN reported on the most recent case of norovirus striking a large cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s The Majesty of the Seas, which was compelled to return home to port after another norovirus outbreak occurred. While this was surely unpleasant, they ran a headline about this for an entire day. Every day since, they have followed up with reports about the ship.
If any of our readers have insight into why CNN continues to relentlessly report on this, please let your conspiracy theories abound in the comment section. The only theory I can come up with is that CNN journalists take lots of cruises, so they report on what is pressing for them, but irrelevant to most everyone else in the world.
Here are just a seven diarrhea/cruise ship stories that CNN has reported on just this last week. There’s probably more, but after finding seven, I swore quietly to myself and decided that’s enough.
Thank you CNN, for your continued coverage of poop (yes, literally):
• Royal Caribbean cruise ship returns home – with a sickness record
• Norovirus: The most common stomach bug
• Dozens of passengers on Royal Caribbean cruise fall ill, company says
• 300 become ill on cruise ship
• Are cruise ships floating petri dishes?
• CDC: Stomach bug strikes second cruise ship
• Royal Caribbean cruise cut short after more than 600 are sickened
About the Author
After setting out to hitchhike from Chile to Alaska, Luke Maguire Armstrong stopped in Guatemala where he spent four years directing the social service programs of the charity Nuestros Ahijados. He is the author of iPoems for the Dolphins to Click Home About, which is especially enjoyed by people “who don’t read poetry.” His new book, How We Are Human, was recently released. (Follow Luke on Twitter: @lukespartacus)