Hide or remove based on content of different div onLoad?

Hide or remove based on content of different div onLoad?

I'm pretty new to jscript and jquery (long-time PHP programmer, though) and I'm stuck with how to properly evaluate a value in a document onLoad.  Caveat - I am working on this via a CMS (BusinessObjects), so don't have 100% control over what's passed in to the page. 

HTML:
<div id="home_alert"><hr />
        <h2>MEMBER ALERT!</h2>
        <p><a href="/member-home.htm">LOG IN to read new items!</a></p>
        </div>
<div id="member-alert-announce">{module_announcement,i,31801,true,,}</div>

if {module_announcement,i,31801,true,,} is "empty" it generates "No announcements found."
What I want to do is evaluate "member-alert-announce" and if its value = "No announcements found." I want the div home_alert to not show on the page.  I never want the value of member-alert-announce to appear on this page - it's just a trigger for the home alert message to appear. 

I've tried both hide() and remove() to accomplish this.  I cannot get the value of #member-alert-announce to be correctly evaluated at all.

My jquery is:
<script>
$(function(){
var alertyes = ("#member-alert-announce");
if (alertyes == "No announcements found.") {
$("#home_alert").hide();
$("#member_alert_announce").hide();
 }
});
//-->
 </script>

All suggestions will be gratefully accepted!  This is frustrating!!!

Thanks
K.