By Hal Brown
If you remember Baby Jessica you probably are at least middle-aged.
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When 18 month old Jessica McClure (Wikipedia) fell into a well in 1987 there was no 24 hour cable news coverage. However it still was covered extensively on every over-the-air TV station.
Then in 2018 we had the rescue of the soccer team from the flooded cave in Thailand. There's nothing like a prolonged dramatic rescue or a devastating hurricane or earthquake to bump coverage of wars and politics off the news.
Today the news is chock-a-block full of reporting about the efforts to rescue a group of wealthy morbid adventurers dying to see where 1,517 passengers and crew of the Titanic lost their lives. These death tourists may or may not actually die themselves. Unlike those on the Titanic, if they do die it is likely their bodies will end up being recovered.
A cynic might say it would be more appropriate if the sub made it to the Titanic that they were left in the same watery 12,500 foot deep grave as the those of 1,517 who lost their lives, some to sharks and some to drowning on the surface or, if they were trapped below decks meeting their deaths there. This would bring the total Titanic death count to 1,522.
If they are rescued it remains to be seen whether they will be seen as heroes or reckless privileged idiots who cost the Canadian and American governments a small fortune to give them the gift of life. If their bodies are recovered it is yet to be determined how the media will cover the story.
Oceangate is the name of the company which owns and operates the sub and has a Wikipedia page here.
At present this is these are the Wikipedia entries related to the current incident:
2023 loss of Titan
On 18 June 2023, Titan went missing in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. The submersible was carrying an expedition of tourists, including Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, Dawood's son, Suleman, and the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, to view the wreckage of RMS Titanic.[29][30] The disappearance of the submarine triggered extensive search and rescue efforts to locate the submersible.[31]
2023 Titan submersible incident
"Literally everything I’ve seen about this missing submarine is insane and sketchy AF… almost none of it makes any sense whatsoever. How long till we find other external factors making it even more so???" the younger Trump tweeted before turning to COVID conspiracies.
"Love the lefties screaming about conspiracies when it seems virtually all of the supposed 'conspiracy theories' that we were told were nonsense (despite almost always being the most plausible answer) have been proven to be dead on. See Wuhan Lab Leak etc.," he later said.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk was infuriated with fact-checking site Snopes, which reported that OceanGate, which was overseeing the expedition, used Starlink for communications. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is run by Musk. It's true, but it leaves out a lot of information about the way that the sub was communicating with those at the surface. Musk was furious seeing the link. Rather than trying to correct the claim, he tweeted it was part of a government conspiracy psy-op.
Update: Vox had a similar story here.
