The American Media - Perfecting the Whine

I've kept a very close watch on the hurricane Katrina coverage - probably like much of America. It's mostly been via CNN.com - easy to hit any time of day and catch up to what's going on. Frankly, though, once the immediate hurricane peril passed, I moved from worried to disgusted.

CNN does one of three things with its stories up until today (when finally it tells us how to help). Here's what they are:

1) Airs stories about how much worse things are getting. (Chicken Little syndrome)
2) Prints stories about how the relief effort isn't good enough/criticizes the federal government.
3) Shows pictures of suffering people in private moments with emotionless taglines. I don't have one handy, but you probably know what I mean: "Watch so and so weep at the loss of his wife of blah blah blah"

What's out there today? "Democrats want disaster answers." What, do they think that the Bush administration has a direct line to God? You want guaranteed safety along the coasts? Don't live there. There you go. Completely not feasibly, but guaranteeable.

Then there are the black leaders yapping about poor response to the crisis. This IS a horrible tragedy. It's brought out the best and worst in people - the best being the outpouring of support and the worst being the miscreant lawless individuals looting and burning New Orleans. And, as I predicted, the best and worst have been synchronous in their occurrence. Hey, black leaders, what's your position - you think the federal government saw what was happening, said "oh, it's just poor black people, let's play another six rounds of canasta?" Idiots. Quit your yapping, open your pocketbooks or roll up your shirtsleeves (if you're down there), and do something. Remember the HURRICANE that caused the problem? Yeah, you think it might be impeding logistical scenarios of getting food and water to suffering people. Wow, that might just be occurring. Of course, if the refugees were mostly white, then the flood waters would miraculously subside, and help would have arrived Monday evening. RIIIIIGHT...

I'm disheartened about the lack of stories of all of the people who've survived and still have each other. I have a client who's based in New Orleans. She's in Baton Rouge (with just about everybody else, she said - the city's overrun) and has probably lost everything. Her son's in the National Guard helping at Flood Zero. And other than being a bit depressed that she's likely not got a home anymore, she's in pretty good sprits and recognizes it could be much, much worse.

And you know what, the response to something like this is NEVER going to be good enough. It's the fact that we're fallible human beings, and that certainly isn't going to change. Kudos to everyone who's doing what they can to help.

Human suffering sucks. It feels like we can't ever send enough money or pray enough. But with human spirit there's always hope. Thank you to Sri Lanka, Japan, Singapore, Great Britain, and all of the other countries who are helping.

hln

Posted by hln at September 3, 2005 09:08 PM | RANT | TrackBack