Fifty years from now, someone viewing this image would see it for what it is: an idiot clinging to a pole in a storm, or what is generally known as "someone who hasn't enough sense to come in out of the rain."
You may have been fortunate enough to have seen a few hilarious minutes of network news some weeks ago, when CBS news anchor Dan Rather reported live from Panama Beach, Florida during the height of Hurricane Opal.
Disasters don't often strike right at newstime, so the decision by CBS News to go live on the scene is understandable. It is "understandable" in the same sense that anyone going out in the height of a hurricane can be understood: it is at least interesting, although somewhat foolhardy.
But, live they went, and America chuckled, we think, as Rather clung with both arms to a pole, attempting to shout over the 90-mph gale. The signal was lost and then returned, and a perplexed anchor back in New York grappled with a real career-buster: how to gracefully dump out on the Godhead himself.
But through sheer will, and repeated chanting of "What's the frequency, Kenneth ?" Dan did return long enough to shout something like "...AND THE WIND JUST KEEPS ON BUILDING AND BUILDING AND BUILDING...". The satellite truck apparently toppled over at that point, and the signal was lost.
Thank you, Dan Rather, for that revelation: that near the eye of a hurricane, the wind "keeps building and building". Weather scientists around the world scrambled for their notebooks, eager to incorporate this new data into their meteorological endeavors.
This is what America saw that night.
Fifty years from now, someone viewing this image would see
it for what it is: an idiot clinging to a pole in a storm,
or what is generally known as "someone who hasn't enough
sense to come in out of the rain."
But there is more to this picture than that. It reminds you of something, and if you would like to see what it most brings to our mind: