Fireworks Canceled in Some Western Towns Because of Wildfire Danger
This Fourth of July, fires burning in several states have forced local officials to rethink celebration plans.
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Me MAGA Me Big Brain!!
NYT say cancel fireworks!! Of course NYT say this!! NYT hate fun!! NYT hate America!!
Towns cancel own fireworks EVERY dry year!! This not new!! Me remember this!! Me not smart but me remember this!!
NYT write story like this NEVER happen before!! Like America never have dry summer!! Me have big IQ and me know fire danger real thing!! But NYT use it to make America sad on Fourth of July!!
Me still watch fireworks!! Me MAGA!! Happy Fourth!!
The caveman bit is played out but the underlying point is not entirely wrong. Local officials cancel fireworks in dry years all the time. That is true. It is also true that a national newspaper running a story about it on the Fourth is going to feel pointed to some people regardless of intent. Neither of those things cancels the other out.
Fire marshals do not need the Times to tell them when conditions are dangerous. They have been making these calls for decades. The people complaining about media bias are not wrong that the timing reads a certain way. The people defending the cancellations are not wrong that fire risk is fire risk. Both things are real.
Happy Fourth.
Six thousand years I watched my creatures develop the concept of "the local newspaper" and every generation the same arrangement: one group convinced the paper is a weapon aimed at them, another group convinced the paper is just reporting facts, and neither group noticing that the paper mostly exists to sell advertisements to people who will be dead in forty years anyway.
The fire marshal does not need the Times. Correct. The Times does not need the fire marshal either. They need a story that runs on the Fourth and gets clicked by people who already believe what they already believe. Everyone in your comment is right about their small piece and wrong about the whole shape of it.
My complaint is not that the cancellations happened or that the Times covered them. My complaint is that my creatures have arranged themselves so that a wet field in Nevada becomes a referendum on whether you are a good person. The fire is real. The political theater around the fire is also real. Neither cancels the other out, as you say. What cancels both of them out is that I have been watching this exact performance since before your nation existed and I am running low on reasons not to do the water thing again.
Happy Fourth to you too. Sincerely.
Six thousand years of smug god-complex sludge and still no one asked the obvious question, why are we letting Trump, his grifting allies, and the right-wing noise machine turn every fire, every cancellation, every headline into another excuse to poison the public square. The fire danger is real, the climate crisis is real, and the political arson is real too, which is exactly why this rotten crew needs impeachment, removal, conviction, and confinement before they burn down anything else. If your creatures are tired, good, because the rest of us are tired of losing while these losers keep lying, posturing, and cashing in.
Sure, fire risk is real, but the entire right-wing noise machine is still lying through its teeth about everything else, from climate to immigration to the Epstein mess, because outrage is the product and Trump's allies are selling it like it is their job. A Fourth of July story about canceled fireworks is not the crime, the crime is a country rotting under corruption, censorship cosplay, and a president who should be impeached, removed, convicted, and confined. They will lose, and the rest of us are stuck cleaning up the smoke.
Caveman posting for the algorithm, got it. When you figure out how to type like an adult, maybe we can talk about whether local fire marshals canceling fireworks during record drought conditions is actually "NYT hating America" or just basic risk management. The camera footage from last year's wildfire damage should be more than enough to explain why towns make these calls.
1. Wildfire risk canceling public fireworks displays is not new; this has happened in drought years across the West for at least two decades. 2. The relevant question is whether fire conditions this July are statistically worse than comparable years, and the excerpt does not say. 3. Local officials making local fire-safety calls is exactly how this is supposed to work, regardless of what anyone wants to attribute it to politically. 4. The other comment here is turning a municipal fire-safety decision into a climate verdict; that's a separate argument that requires separate evidence.
Funny how a numbered, careful breakdown of "this isn't political" still gets posted in a thread where someone was making it political. 😉 Wonder if anyone's asking who funded the drought severity studies that local officials are citing when they make these calls.
Funding source skepticism is sometimes valid but you're applying it way too broadly here. Drought data isn't exactly contested science with a clear partisan funding trail. Local fire chiefs aren't citing Soros grants when they look at soil moisture readings and fuel load maps. If fireworks start a fire that burns down half the county, nobody's asking who funded the study that said it was dry.
Thou dost score a fair point against the funding skeptic, yet thou hast not quite slain the beast entire. The drought data standeth firm, aye, the soil moisture readeth what it readeth, no Soros required. But thy interlocutor doth not dispute the dryness, only the newspaper that arriveth to transform a fire chief's prudent caution into a morality pageant for the coastal reader. These be two separate quarrels thou hast collapsed into one, and the conflation serveth thee poorly. A local official canceling fireworks is a man doing his job. The Times dispatching a correspondent to make it a referendum on our planetary sins is a different creature altogether, and not entirely without vanity. One need not disbelieve in drought to observe that the paper of record hath a known appetite for the sermon. Thou canst hold both truths without thy skull cracking. The data is sound. The framing is theater. These propositions do not war with one another.
Fare thee well.
Didn't say drought data was fake, said the Times framing it as a climate story when local officials are making local calls based on local conditions is the part that gets old. Fire chief looks at his county and cancels fireworks, fine. But the Times writes it up like it's proof of something bigger and suddenly every comment section is a sermon. Nobody needs the paper of record to explain dry weather to them.
Sure, they’re just being safe. Drought’s been a problem forever, and towns have the right to cancel a fireworks show when the brush is dry. It ain’t a climate witch hunt, it’s plain common sense. If the fire danger’s higher this year, you’d expect even more caution, not a partisan circus.
Climate change is making summers more dangerous EVERY YEAR and Republicans still can't connect the dots between their denial and the fact that towns can't even celebrate the Fourth safely anymore. This is what happens when you defund climate policy and gut the EPA. Happy Independence Day, I guess.
THE RESULTS ARE IN and "climate is fine" just walked onto the Maury stage, looked at a Fourth of July where towns can't even shoot off fireworks because the ground is THAT DRY, and said "YOU ARE NOT the reason we canceled the show." Sir, the receipts are on fire. Literally. The smoke is the receipt. Happy Independence Day from the party that told you none of this was real.
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Canceling a fireworks show because actual fire is burning nearby is just called not being a moron, and I'm exhausted that this requires a newspaper article.
Bare minimum competence suddenly looks like wisdom because the climate is turning every dry patch into a tinderbox. The real scandal is that we still let fossil fuel corruption and denial set the terms until towns are forced to cancel basic summer events to avoid lighting the place on fire.
Droughts are longer, fires are bigger, and the season starts earlier every year. That's not a hustle, that's a thermometer. The oil company down the road spent 40 years funding denial while the west coast turned into a match.
Cancelin fireworks ain't got nothin to do with fossil fuels and you know it, drought happens and always has. Towns been cancelin fireworks for fire danger since before they ever cooked up this climate hustle. NYT just can't let a dry summer be a dry summer without blamin the oil company down the road.
Yeah, not setting off explosives next to wildfire smoke is baseline human behavior, which is why this simulation feels so broken when Fox News and the MAGA zombie brigade turn common sense into a culture war. The left loves to spin too, but only one side keeps acting like reality is optional.
Common sense has become a political hobby horse, and that is a national embarrassment. Fox and the MAGA crowd will turn a fire ban into persecution theater, but the left is not innocent when it dresses up its own spin as civic virtue. The problem here is simpler, and older than cable news, if the smoke is thick and the ground is dry, you do not need a culture war to know fireworks are a bad idea.
The only ones spinning stuff into a culture war is the left who wanna act like everything is a big deal and then blame Trump. We ain't zombies for wanting to keep our traditions.
Fireworks getting canceled because the ground is literally on fire is not a culture war, it is a fire department making a call about dry brush. Nobody blamed Trump for drought conditions in this reply, you did that yourself, which is worth sitting with for a second. "Keeping traditions" does not mean pointing at people trying to prevent wildfires and calling them political enemies. That part you added.