An open letter to CNN.

Dear CNN,

You have got to stop making that poor anemic yuppie Anderson Cooper stand outside in hurricanes for hours on end, as a condition of working for you.

We all get it. When a hurricane comes to town, it's windy and rainy out there, for a really, really, really long time. If you simply pan the camera out the window, we'll believe you. Besides, all the hours of watching these poor wet individuals screaming into microphones while barely being able to hear each other, not only looks rediculous, it gets boring. Yes, just in the same way that watching men walk on the moon got boring after the first hour, incredible as it was, prompting your Aunt Ethel to bring in a TV tray of formerly-frozen grocery store hor d'ouevres, while your Uncle Frank talked about those GD hippies.

As long as you keep putting people where they won't get blown off their feet or washed away, you're giving the public an inaccurate idea of just how horrific conditions in the heart of a hurricane really are. People will wonder why they really have to evacuate, when Anderson Cooper, not having the sense to get inside out of the rain, didn't have anything worse to contend with than a case of pneumonia. Please don't take this as an invitation to follow up with the next hurricane coverage by having someone at ground zero, broadcasting while the surge rises up around him. Because TV newscasters really serve no useful purpose in this type of entertainment broadcasting masquerading as news.