The Free Press

Speaking of communism, yesterday I was watching Airplane II: The Sequel on my laptop while I was at work.  They have a gag segment where they show three newscasts.  The first is from the US.  (The actor playing the newscaster is, believe it or not, a young Pat Sajak.) I’m reciting this from memory, but this is more or less what it said.

American Newscaster:  “Four alarm fire rages through downtown Buffalo.”

[Footage of a large building on fire.]

“In other news, space shuttle lunar mission headed for disaster.”

Japanese Newscaster:  “Four alarm fire rages through downtown Tokyo.”

[Footage of a large building on fire.]

“In other news, space shuttle lunar mission headed for disaster.”

[Footage of space shuttle in Godzilla’s mouth.]

Russian Newscaster:  [With gun to head] “Four alarm fire rages through downtown Moscow, making room for a glorious new tractor factory.”

[Footage of a large building on fire.]

“In lighter news, hundreds of capitalist running dogs are sure to die in lunar shuttle disaster.”

I, being a child of the Cold War, thought this was hilarious.  I showed it to one of my employees, a girl who loves watching American movies.  I put the Chinese subtitles on and said, “Do you get this?” She replied, “I understand everything they said but I don’t understand why it’s funny.”

Kinda telling, isn’t it?

Having grown up in buffalo (and being from a
long line of fireman) I can confirm
that somewhere in Buffalo there is a 4 alarm
fire in progress at all times.

dave: We get the Buffalo news here in Toronto.. Buffalo is very widely known as “fire city” up here.

Is “4-alarm-fire” another way to say “gentrification”?

When I was a kid I built a short-wave receiver and spent winter nights listening to news broadcasts from all over the world.  If you listened to VOA, BBC, and Radio Moscow all on the same night, you’d swear you were on three different planets as they reported the exact same news stories.