Sudden Collapse

The Don Shelby Credibility Bridge--spanning the divide between the local anchorman's ego and reality--collapsed without warning shortly before 10pm this evening. Preliminary indications are that a massive failure in Shelby's structural integrity led to the collapse.

About 6:45pm tonight on the way to a supper club, I got a call from my wife with the news that the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis--a bridge that I crossed as recently as yesterday afternoon on my way to Wisconsin--had collapsed. At the restaurant, the TVs in the bar were tuned to the news and we caught all the horrific details.

Back at the motel, JB and I decided that we wanted to get as much of a local angle as possible. Since WCCO was the only Twin Cities station available, we reluctantly went with their coverage, despite our misgivings.

At first we were debating which was worse, having to listen to weatherman Paul Douglas or anchorman Don Shelby discuss structural engineering. It was obvious that neither had the slightest understanding of the subject, but both felt the need to blather on (or read notes handed to them) as if they were experts in the matter. Unfortunately for Douglas, the "storm" that was supposed to hit the area petered out and he was quickly shuffled to the side lines, a disappointing blow to his hopes of sharing the spotlight.

They left plenty of room for Shelby (and his ego) to take center stage. I'm not saying that Don Shelby wanted the bridge to collapse, but once it did, you could sense that he was reveling in the moment. This was his place. This was time. This was his moment to shine. This was his Emmy.

The man's self-importance knows no limits and it was on display for all to see this evening. At a time when the news coverage should have focused solely on rescue and recovery efforts, Shelby almost immediately launched into discussions about the possible causes of the collapse and where blame could be assigned. He was obviously getting all his information on bridge structures and engineering from other sources, but he rarely if ever mentioned them, giving the viewer the impression that HE DON SHELBY knew all about such matters and was able and willing to start drawing conclusions while the rubble was still settling. It was a disgusting display of arrogance with an almost total absence of wisdom.

For the record, according to JB's watch, the first attempt to connect the bridge collapse to politics occurred at 9:33pm--a scant three hours and twenty-eight minutes after the bridge went down--when Shelby began talking about how "some" people in the Congress had argued that we weren't spending enough on bridges and tunnel, a not-so-veiled inference to the Democratic talking points about the Bush administration's spending priorities. If only we hadn't provided tax cuts to the rich, the bridge might still be standing.

Shelby further embarrassed himself by trying to magnify the importance of arcane details from a 2001 safety report on the bridge to build up the impression that maybe the report had predicted the collapse. He also described the way the government contracted for such reports as "farming them out," scare words designed to conjure up images of outsourcing and privatization run amok. It was left up to a fresh faced reporter (an intern perhaps) to accurately explain and concisely summarize what the report did and did not say in a segment on the 10pm news. His manner was far more professional than anything Shelby was able to muster on this evening when a bridge collapsed and took with it the slim remains of an anchorman's integrity.