Blame it on the Mullahs!
Beware! Iranian mullahs are watching the Weather Channel!
For some perspective on the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I have looked back to Eric Klinenberg's Heat Wave; A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago a text I studied in an undergraduate sociology class. Heat Wave analyzes the horrors affecting the poor, the elderly and the black citizens of Chicago after a devastating stretch of 120 degree weather in 1995. Similarly to New Orleans the poorest and marginalized citizens of Chicago suffered disproportionately from a so called natural disaster. What we leaned and can be said about Katrina is that while the weather itself is a "natural event" (though I guess you can argue human induced climatic change could have played an effect...) the disastrous results are entirely man made. The structural inequality present in New Orleans created a divided city with an established and insulated upper and middle class, and neglected ghettos where poverty and violence where hidden in the name of le bon temps. Sickeningly some commentators and the head of FEMA himself, Michael Brown took the time to point out that the people who stayed are partly to blame for their current misery. He is of course assuming, as Barak Obama noted, that every one has an SUV they can pile their children in, put a hundred dollars worth of gas in the tank and wait out the storm in a hotel room.....For people living paycheck to paycheck, who rely on public transportation, have no credit cards, distant and equally poor families and elderly relatives to care for it simply wasn't an option. The ugly fact that people are reluctant to admit is that their race contributed to their poverty in a racially divided country and their poverty condemned to death when Katrina came knocking on their door.
An article on the BBC website last week said it so well.
"The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better. It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream. The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America. That is what presidential campaigning is all about. But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and over-stretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored. " (Matt Wells, Story from BBC news:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr//2/hi/
There was an article in the NYTimes today that mentioned a dead body that has been sitting on the streets for days.......yes days.
Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time. Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City. That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable. Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet. (Dan Barry, September 8th, 2005)
The Bush administration's response was initially apathetic (Black people in Louisiana do not contribute to the Republican Party) then mock outrage, to comfortable but meaningless platitudes. Can the American people see this? Remember Bush won an election after sinking our economy, lying about a cause for war, letting Osama Bin Laden get away ......etc. They can always count on the short attention span of the American electorate.
Ok....enough diatribe. It's time for Torts.
posted by Gryphen at 5:15 PM
8 Comments:
I did not like that Dan Barry article.
I understand that a dead body in the street is a horrible thing, and deserves an article on the front page of the NYT.
But, of course, that means you have to give an article to it. Not a paragraph that serves only to get your article on the front page. I found the writing to be a little too sophomoric and adverb littered.
Like the forgotten detritus littering the streets of New Orleans, Barry's article sprinkles unnecessarily literary aspersions throughout his detailed diatribe.
Am I just too jaded?
However, the Tom Tomorrow is on point. all this misdirection is so blatant, I am consistently shocked at how people let it go.
Okay, off to class
I totally agree with your feelings about the Dan Barry article. It was just incredible to me to see such a frank, and emotional (even if affected) display on the front page. It was almost poetic. What I found troubling is his indignation (mock?) at everyone's disregard, including the National Guardsmen who took the photo. Do you suppose Mr. Barry tried to do anything to relieve the "dead son of the Crescent City" of the humiliation of rotting in plain view? Is writing an article about it as self-serving and voyeuristic as taking a picture if you don’t do anything to help move the body afterwards?
I don't know, I feel like he used it for an excuse to write his flowery prose.
If the article had maybe tried to find out more about the circumstances of his murder, the apathy of the national guardsmen, or even if he went on about the overwhelming number of bodies...
Instead he just flitted from sentimental topic to sentimental topic. He offered nothing 'newsworthy'. The only 'new' thing in that article was the fact that there's a corpse on union street. The rest of the article was simply maudlin ramblings.
I could make an articulate and impassioned response to your accusations but anything that falls outside of your groupthink is thoughtcrime.
In the alternative, I will say this: nice job politicizing human tragedy & I am so glad that you lost control of the presidency, congress and soon the judiciary.
keep up the race/class baiting. It is obviously working.
OE&E Co.,
I understand that it may be uncomfortable for you to step outside of your rose colored reality where race and class divides are a thing of the past, the government works in the best interests of ALL its citizens and that natural disasters are acts of God or chance that effect everyone in their path in the same way. Unfortunately the evidence weighs heavily against such a quaint world-view.
Blacks in this country are poorer than their white counterparts. If it’s not due to structural inequality deeply rooted in racism, what is it?
Poor people are more susceptible to a litany of public health, social and environmental damages. If you disagree with this assertion, I’d love to see some justification, because the evidence is overwhelming in favor of my view.
The people most affected by this hurricane were poor, and in New Orleans disproportionably black. Did you watch the television??? Perhaps the liberal media were hiding all the middle class white people in the back of the crowd to prove a point?????
Please, do your best to summon the courage and risk the consequences that will surely befall you if you write or say anything counter to the liberal hegemonic agenda that is clearly running this country now and respond the above “accusations”. (This current administration’s massive tax cuts; environmental and economic deregulation and current foreign policy are surely your best evidence of the supremacy of leftist ideology.)
What do you mean by “politicize human tragedy”? If you mean bringing attention to the causes and consequences of the devastation disproportionately affecting a vulnerable group of American citizens while it is politically inconvenient for the political elite, it’s my pleasure. The alternative of course is to let them go through with the cleanup and wait for their own inquiry, which of course we know would never be self-serving, dishonest or politicized. If the less than frank reflection we had post 9-11, or the lack critical evaluation over the decision to enter an unjustified and un-winnable war are any indication of what we can expect, I’ll not take my chances. Thanks.
If by “race/class baiting” you mean, pointing out inherent racial and social inequalities, that effect tens of millions of people in this country, counter to the sacred American delusion of justice and equality for all, again guilty as charged.
2 things.
1) The comments up until your comment were about how one person had done just that - politicized human tragedy, and used maudlin sentiment and grotesque images (did you see the picture of that corpse?) to make a largely unrelated point about who was at fault.
So whatever 'group' was involved in the 'groupthink' you accused (assumedly gryph and me, as we're the only two who commented on this) was not really a 'group' at all... in fact, we seem to have agreed with you that politicizing human tragedy by appeals to the more susceptible human emotions is reprehensible, and that if he had facts that were related to this corpse, or if he had anything to back up his argument, that article would have been amazing.
Instead, he did a half-assed job, and merely perpetuated the dumbing of america.
2) which brings me to my second point. If you want to talk about politicizing human tragedy, the worst example of that are campaign ads for President Bush from last year.
Images of broken bodies, of American flags, and images of George W. as savior are as blatant an example of politicizing human tragedy as I can possibly imagine. But my guess, is that you were too caught up in the group nonthink that you just felt that it was appropriate for the President of the united states to claim that all relief work and search and rescue work were done personally by him.
So I don't know where your comment is coming from, as both of the points you might be trying to make are not connected to the criticizm you've levied.
197 dead, response faster than Andrew.
You lose.
post script:
i)"The Bush administration's response was initially apathetic (Black people in Louisiana do not contribute to the Republican Party) then mock outrage, to comfortable but meaningless platitudes. Can the American people see this? Remember Bush won an election after sinking our economy, lying about a cause for war, letting Osama Bin Laden get away"
ii) "counter to the sacred American delusion of justice and equality for all."
That is groupthink.
Gotta get back to watching Kennedy talk about the sky falling. Think I will make some popcorn.
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