Why Is CNN Obsessed With Cruise Ship Toilets?
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Go ahead, ask me how I feel about cruise ships. I feel fine about them. Feel free, ask me to elaborate. See, they really are not my thing, but whatever, if people like taking a cruise, I say go for it. To each their own. Ask me what I really think. Fine, because you pressed me with this relentless barrage of unnecessary questions, I will tell you that I think cruise ships is to traveling what Twinkies (they’re coming back) wrapped in Kraft cheese singles is to haute cuisine.
Frankly, there seems little reason for a cruise ship to pull out of the port, since most of the “trip” will be spent “onboard” and the “visit” to other cultures is as immersive as taking swimming lessons in a bathtub.
I wrote a piece in 2010 here at TheExpeditioner about Cruise ships in an article titled “Tragedy On The High Seas Makes CNN and Carnival Look Like Extreme Sissies.” Essentially, CNN covered an incident in which a cruise ship lost power for a couple days like they were covering a war zone — calling broken showers and the lack of air conditioning an “ordeal” and “tragedy.”
Well friends and foes, CNN and another cruise ship with problems has turned up on the headline page of CNN’s travel section. This time a “Cruise ship suffer[ed] stopped-up toilets.”
Bravo again CNN, you are cutting edge in cruise ship bathroom journalism.
From CNN correspondent Katia Hetter’s brave cruise ship bathroom coverage, “On April 11, the cruise line’s Crown Princess was on a seven-day Caribbean cruise when a blockage within the ship’s vacuum toilet system rendered 410 stateroom toilets inoperable from 5 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.”
But it was not a complete tragedy, as affected passengers were given $50 each. This makes my own stunt of drinking a gallon of water on a bus in high school during a speech trip and not using the bathroom for four hours for $10 seem underpaid. But then again, I was doing it to impress girls, who, seemed unenthused with my talents. C’est la vie
Apparently, though, as CNN quoted Astro Flyer in their coverage, these things happen. “Toilet problems can happen on any ship when passengers flush the wrong things down.” He’s speaking the truth. You can’t just flush anything down the toilets, as another high school experience with a lobster taught me over the course of before-school detention when I was tasked with the job of helping the janitor clean the gyms to give me time to reflect on what exactly had compelled me to put a live lobster in the toilet. Once again, it was girls.
There might be something I am missing here. CNN is either way too concerned with cruise ship feces, or they are super meta-genius journalist hipsters delving into the mythical fifth realm of irony and this is all an elaborate joke that only people with very thick-rimmed glasses are snickering about. I’m going to have to think about this a little more — perhaps while in the bathroom.
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 (available for sale on Amazon.com) which is especially enjoyed by people “who don’t read poetry.” (Follow Luke on Twitter: @lukespartacus). His new book, How We Are Human, was recently released.