Accidental tourists
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- November
- 21
This has been Expedition Week on the National Geographic Channel. As I’m a big Alexander the Great buff, I couldn’t wait to see a preview of “Egypt Unwrapped: Alexander the Great’s Lost Tomb,” which premieres at 8 tonight. You, however, might be more interested in the mummies, dinosaurs and tales of the Scorpion King and King Herod, which fill out Expedition Weekend.Anyway, the Alexander episode did shed some new light on the possible whereabouts of the Macedonian conqueror’s remains, which were lost after religious revolutions rocked the city of Alexandria in the fourth century. The notion that the temple at the Valley of the Golden Mummies, just south of Cairo, could be his final resting place is fascinating even if the reenactments of Alexander sweeping across the desert are too small-scale to capture the epic romance of a man who had conquered the known world by age 26.
As I was watching the program, I couldn’t help but compare Alexander’s accomplishments with the “Today” show’s second attempt to travel to the ends of the earth to educate us about the horrors of global warming. One could wonder why Matt, Meredith, Al and Ann need to add to their carbon footprints to do this. Couldn’t they simply interview experts at the sites via remote?
No, apparently, they had to go scuba-diving in Belize and hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro in a vain effort to distract the audience into thinking that action is the same as achievement. Yes, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire at age 26. But he had been preparing for that goal his whole life. You don’t become Jacques Cousteau or Edmund Hillary in an instant.
This was painfully apparent in Ann Curry’s reporting as she tried to climb the more difficult route to the top of Kilimanjaro in the rainy season. By day two it was clear that she was suffering the effects of altitude sickness, as were other members of the team, and the quest for the summit had to be abandoned.
So the story switched from being about the effects of global warming on the magnificent peak to being about the reporter, which is never the point of journalism.
To Ann and company I say: You’re no Alexander.
This entry was posted
on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 5:19 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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