So you settle down in front of the tube and grab the remote and click! There it is, the Sago mine disaster, 12 men dead two miles inside a West Virginia mountainside. Brave but beaten rescuers in hardhats and SCBA gear, ungodly quiet as giant drills wind down, politicians and company men emoting, desperate kinfolk with grief etched on their faces, deep as the hollows of Appalachia.

We have seen this drama unfold before, the names of the mines a litany of the dead: Monongah, Siltex and Consol No. 9. Cherry Creek and Centralia No. 5. Warrior Run, Lick Branch, Carbon Hill, Satanic, Old Ben No. 8. Men go down in the mines, methane or coal dust explodes, columns and pillars collapse, and men die, crushed or suffocated or poisoned by carbon dioxide.

It doesn't happen as often as it used to: Coal mining fatalities are down 92 percent since 1950. Equipment is better, mines are safer and it takes fewer men.

But it's still dirty and dangerous work. In Appalachia, coal is mined "pillar-and-room," as it was when Mother Jones was organizing the United Mine Workers in West Virginia in 1912. Miners carve out "rooms" in coal seams, leaving "pillars" behind, sometimes working in "dogholes" 20 inches high, two miles underground.

Another thing that hasn't changed: Some mines are better than others. The Sago mine's operator was in bankruptcy last year when International Coal Group Inc., purchased the operation. Last year, under ICG management, the Sago mine's accident rate was three times higher than the national average. It paid $24,000 in fines for 202 violations of federal mine safety laws, including 16 problems that the operator knew about but failed to fix.

Mine disasters used to be relatively private affairs, but in the age of satellite news and 24-hour news cycles, nothing is private any more, particularly not grief. And so we sit in front of the tube, in our warm well-lighted houses and see the families of the Sago miners as they worry, see them as they rejoice when word comes that the men are alive, see their souls crushed three hours later when the company gets around to telling them that, on second thought, it seems a slight "miscommunication" has occurred.

What a tragedy, what a terrible thing. And then we change the channel and click! What's on HBO? Electricity comes off the grid and into our homes. In St. Louis, it probably came from Ameren's Callaway nuclear plant or one of Ameren's coal-fired generators that burn low sulfur coal ripped from surface mines in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. But for those who live in the northeast or southeast, the click! probably came from burning Appalachian coal

There's a strange circularity to it all, men mining coal to produce electricity so America can watch coal mining disasters on TV. And the TV may well be made in China, which is replicating all the tragic mistakes the American coal mining industry made — brutal hours and working conditions, dangerous mines, horrible accidents — as it fuels its own industrial revolution.

But the business of powering America is booming: Oil and natural gas are through the roof and America is turning again to coal. With overtime, a man can make $50,000 a year working the mines, and get benefits, too. Aside from the collateral damage, it's all good.