For those unaware, men are currently being pulled out of a mine, pulled out of a mine in Chile, pulled out of a mine in Chile that they have been trapped in for 68 days. But what really grabs us about this South American feel-good spectacle of the year isn’t the actual hoisting of the men to greet their wives (and mistresses — awkward!) but rather the bombastically exclamatory reactions it has inspired.
At Media Decoder Brian Stelter blogged a flurry of these hyperboles, posting as the miners began to emerge from the purgatorial depths that had imprisoned them. The reactions began as soon as the first man to be rescued, Florencio Ávalos, was pulled up at 11:10 EST last night, and will continue through the next 32 rescues. (The most recently saved was number sixteen, and CNN will be streaming the rest of the rescues online.)
Here are some of the best quips from Stelter’s post.
“Never has a man been underground so long and gotten out alive,” said the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
“This is the ultimate live shot,” Gary Tuchman, a CNN correspondent, said more than once during the live coverage.
Said Kerry Sanders, an NBC News correspondent, on MSNBC: “You know what? I think we need this as a world. I think we do. We need this.”
Said Adam Housely, a correspondent on Fox News: the rescue “takes the whole globe and brings us together.”
Chris Jansing, a late-night anchor on MSNBC, asked a guest at one point, “You could not write a script any better than this, could you?”
Mike Rowe, the host of the reality show “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel, told CNN’s Larry King, “Whatever it is we call reality that passes for TV is nonsense compared to what really is happening right in front of us.”
The reactions from the world over will continue to spill out as the men are raised, one by one, from the mine shaft. But perhaps the bulk of the overblown reaction will be saved for that ultimate moment — the raising of the final man. When the last of the 33 miners ascends from the hollowed-out pit they were forced to call home, you can expect a few moments of exaggeration.
nfreeman@observer.com
