Rantz: Here are useless, obvious tips to stay cool during Seattle’s summer heatwave

Seattle reporters and anchors love heatwaves and this city is right in the middle of one — in the summer no less! This is unheard of.

Never too ashamed to rewrite the same story for the 11th time, journalists happily repurpose old tips on how to stay cool. The tips are almost always either useless or obvious. But when you have to bang out content every day, and you know SEO will work in your favor during heatwaves, it’s easy to see why laziness can pay off. Indeed: I’m doing it right now.

We always get some variation of the same standards tips. You should stay in the shade as best as you can. Have an air conditioner? Keep it on! Don’t have an air conditioner? Go some place that does (::insert note about whatever big movie is out and encourage people to go to a local theater::). Don’t forget to wear loose-fitting clothes (please shower and wear deodorant as loose-fitting clothes mean you will stink up whatever room you’re in).

Plus, we’re always told to check in on our elderly neighbors and never leave pets in the car (::insert link to sad story about a Labrador Retriever that nearly died in the parking lot of a Snohomish County Walmart::). We’ve also started to get warnings about checking in on the homeless because … equity.

Heat is racist, and other lazy hot takes … get it? Hot takes!

Speaking of equity, WOKE 5 News (KING 5) will be sure to put their Facing Race team of social justice activist-journalists on a story to claim heat is racist! Low-income communities have more heat-retaining asphalt, making the temperature disproportionately targeting people of color.

Lazy editors will copy and paste press releases about open cooling centers around the region. Many local journalists copy and paste press releases from Seattle politicians, so I suppose it’s not much different.

Tacoma News Tribune staff didn’t hide their laziness.

They just copy-and-pasted tips from the CDC to stay cool. The title of their latest useless story is, “How to stay cool without air conditioning as Washington state faces extreme heat wave.” Remarkably, the first tip is to “Spend as much time as you can in air conditioning, as air conditioning is the No. 1 way to protect yourself against heat-related illnesses and death.”

Most outlets then send the reporters they hate into the field for live hits under the scorching sun. They drip in sweat as they uncomfortably tell us how hot it is, before running a pre-recorded package filled with random man-on-the-street sound of folks offering their own useless tips on how they stay cool.

There are always at least 17 interviews with hardware store managers telling us how they’re quickly selling out of fans. Stupid people buy them in order to recirculate stale, hot air in their homes. They get no relief, hate themselves for not buying an air conditioner this year, and vow to do so before the next heatwave. They never do. It’s a vicious cycle.

Since these stories are usually just lists of tips, I’ve also noticed they don’t really have a clear ending that ties everything together. No summary of what was said. It just ends and feels incompl

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3–6 pm on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow @JasonRantz  on  Twitter,  Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently for more news and analysis.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz