Harp, harp, harp

I know it. I know I’ve said enough about the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and their suffering from Irma’s effects.

But man alive, our news media stinks sometimes. On the Evening News from both CBS and NBC their reporters in the Florida Keys repeated the same phrase: “Here, where Irma made its first US landfall…”

The US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are both territories of the United States, as are fourteen other places around the world. The USVI, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, American Samoa and Puerto Rico all have sizable populations. Their citizens are US citizens, albeit ones with no voting representation in Congress. Parenthetically, I have lived on two of those five islands, Guam and Puerto Rico. They’re as American as any small city in the United States.

St. John in the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico both got hit by Irma, hours before the storm hit the Keys. It does them a disservice to ignore their status as part of the United States.

Come on, media, grow a brain.

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