Brain Dead or Just SOP?

Large organizations or groups have standard operating procedures that they use.  Sometimes, those SOPs create results that can best be described as strange.  For example, about a half hour ago, I was in my car and was listening to Rush Limbaugh.  The sun was shining and the roads were clear, all the snow having been removed by plows hours earlier.  Suddenly, the show was interrupted by ominous music and the announcer said he was delivering a "winter storm update".  It was sad, actually, to hear the announcer in New York tell us that it was currently sunny in Manhattan and then fill us in that there might be as much as another inch of snow at the east end of Long Island.  He also confirmed that in Manhattan, there had been about 4 inches of snow.  That was a "winter storm" that merited the big production put on by the station?  I don't think so.  I can understand how the media can hype a storm prior to its onset.  They don't know for sure whether or not it will really be a big storm, so the hysteria is at least plausible.  But we just went through the so called storm and it was a total dud.  The media hype, however, had done such a good job of scaring everyone, that for the first time I can remember, the road in Connecticut, New Jersey and even New York City were closed.  Think about that.  At 11:00 last night, cars were banned from roads in the city even though it seemed pretty clear by then that the storm was not going to be all that bad.  The blizzard had been supposed to start after 1:00 in the afternoon.  Ten hours later, there was an inch or two of snow, but no blizzard winds and no real problems caused by the "terrible" storm.  It was a joke, but New York's mayor did not bother to change his order which actually shut off the economy of the city for no good reason whatsoever.  In Connecticut, governor Dan Malloy acted in a similar fashion.  This morning, when it was clear that there would be no catastrophe, Malloy lifted the ban on driving on local roads, but he kept it in place on the highways in the state.  Malloy did not have it in him to admit that the travel ban had been unnecessary.  Instead, he had to remove it in pieces just so it looked like he knew what he was doing.