John Hinderaker of PowerLine blasts the mainstream media’s coverage of New Orleans:
The mainstream media’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and the disasters in New Orleans is a disgrace, possibly the worst instance yet of media bias. Insane claims by left-wing nuts that President Bush botched the recovery effort on purpose so as to kill black people are repeated by the MSM in a chin-stroking mode, as if to say, “It’s an interesting question–they might be on to something.”
He must not have read “A Nation’s Castaways” yesterday in the Washington Post by staff writers Lynne Duke and Teresa Witz. If he had I suspect his criticism would not have been so mild and restrained.
They are the Other, these victims of Katrina.
And in this country, the Other is black. Poor. Desperate.
Mainstream America too often demonizes the Other because, well, we’ve been conditioned to do so….
And so it goes, through a litany of America-bashing quotes from a chorus of left-wing critics:
Lani Guinier
Poor black people, says Lani Guinier, a Harvard University law professor, are “the canary in the mine. Poor black people are the throwaway people. And we pathologize them in order to justify our disregard.”
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson describes the New Orleans convention center, where tens of thousands live in fetid conditions, as “the hull of a slaveship.”
Inside the proverbial slaveship are the “captives,” who have been described as running completely amok….
Roger Wilkins
Roger Wilkins, the George Mason University historian, sees the historic sweep of the legacy of slavery in the helpless straits of folks marooned by the storm. Seen through that arc of history, Wilkins says that Monday’s unmasking of the vast inequality within New Orleans is a “day a reckoning” for the United States: of reckoning with a history of ignoring the poorest of the poor that dates back to our earliest days.
Now a bit of neutral reporting from the authors, leading to the next series of similar quotes:
The history of marginalizing black folk in America, especially poor ones, runs so deep that it occurs like second nature. It is one reason, say several prominent black intellectuals, that the response to the devastation of Katrina was so slow.
Now back to the scholarly analysis:
Russell Adams
Racism runs “so deep that the folks who are slow to respond can’t see it,” says Russell Adams, professor of Afro-American studies at Howard University. “That’s the unperceived character of racial behavior, of what I would call hidden racism where you don’t know that this situation has a racial character to it, just like fish have trouble defining water.”
Next, the authors assert that “[s]cholars are in agreement that race has shaped the lives and prospects of African Americans for generations,” as though race is not a factor but the only factor.
But then, in a faint stab at balance — or, more likely, comic relief — a couple of conservatives are trotted out as a foil:
Many conservative thinkers espouse a race-neutral analysis. Racism doesn’t cause poverty, they say, poverty is the result of a pattern of dependency that has set in among poor blacks.
In New Orleans, “you are dealing with the permanently poor — people who don’t have jobs, are not used to getting up and organizing themselves and getting things done and for whom sitting and waiting is a way of life,” says Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity and a former head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
“This is a natural disaster that is exacerbated by the problems of the underclass. The chief cause of poverty today among blacks is no longer racism. It is the breakdown of the traditional family.”
John McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, cautions against the use of the “nasty, circular, unprovable” argument of race because “this is a matter of the incompetence of the American infrastructure. It’s not a matter of somebody in Washington deciding we don’t need to rush [to New Orleans] because they’re all poor jungle bunnies anyway.
Conservatives then exit, stage right, never to be heard from again, and the Left Chorus is brought back on stage:
There is the white TV anchor who muses that the left-behind are living paycheck to paycheck and therefore could not afford to evacuate, and how that paycheck-to-paycheck hustle is not a part of the white American experience. (Tell that to the scores of middle-class whites struggling to service their debt.) Or stand-up comic Bill Maher riffing on the subtleties of 21st century racism and the hurricane. And rapper Kanye West declaring at a concert fundraiser for victims, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” He said America is set up “to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible.”
This feeling of being disregarded is pervasive in the African American community, where old wounds still sting. Witness a “Saturday Night Live” skit from 1998, where Samuel L. Jackson and Tracy Morgan indulge in a bit of hyperbole, playing African Americans in the fifth class steerage of the Titanic. Everyone was rescued before them — even the furniture.
What, you thought that was just humor?
While that may have been comedy, its message is conveyed in all kinds of real-life ways. Deborah Willis, photographer and professor of the arts at New York University, laments some of the images coming out of New Orleans.
The frequent replay of what has become an iconic looting photo — the guy with the flying braids and falling pants — “desensitizes the viewer of finding compassion for what happened to the thousands of people who have died or who have suffered,” she says.
It’s an us- vs .-them kind of image, she says, and “a racialized image because of the way it’s been used and reused over again.”
Ian Haney Lopez, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, agrees: “If you see a photo from New Orleans of a white person with a shotgun, you think, ‘Defending property.’ If the news flashes a picture of a black person with a shotgun, you think, ‘Looter.'”
The lessons of all this? The authors conclude their piece with two:
1. They return to Prof. Adams, quoted above, who tells us that “[t]he lesson we can take from this is that the society cannot blithely ignore extreme disparities in economic and social situations.” We must, he suggests, redistribute wealth and, somehow, social status.
2. They quote Noel Ignatiev, described as “author of ‘How the Irish Became White’ and editor of Race Traitor, a journal dedicated to the ‘New Abolitionism,'” who “sees an opportunity for a realignment of thinking.”
“White is not a matter of color. White is a matter of a sense of entitlement, a sense they are or ought to be entitled to specially protected place in society,” he says. “But there are plenty of white folks on the bottom rung of society, people for whom whiteness isn’t doing much at all.
Some may be awakening to the notion there’s no use clinging to an identity that’s doing them no good. If white folks start thinking of themselves as poor and dispossessed instead of privileged, it will change the way they act. We will see the beginnings of class conflict.”
Well, after all that hull-of-the-slaveship racial doom and gloom, Duke and Witz end their article on an optimistic, hopeful note. The silver lining in the cloud of racial oppression revealed for all the world to see by Katrina is that, finally, we may be able to move beyond race into the struggle we should be having, which is class conflict.
Oh Lordy Lord!
The factories of the racism industry are running at full capacity in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. BlameBush! makes fun of the outburst of BS. So does The Therapist. John Rosenberg lists the insane litany of the race hustlers in
All over this country, Cobras are rehearsing, adding to or changing their script, using leftist blogs and the DNC talking points as reiterated by the MSM as sources. All are applying their same old template, but upgrading it so as to use the power of this tragedy to add weight to their same old axe-grinding. When they are ready for prime time we will hear from them.
This tragic occurrence is just so much fodder for their rants. Most of what happened on the Gulf Coast had absolutely nothing to do with race. By the time the Cobras get their acts together it will be one long voyage of a slave ship, a whole series of racial incidents, with some water in the background.
Please just make me cynical and don
If whites start feeling dispossessed, they will feel dispossessed because of minorities and affirmative action and wealth transfer and illegal immigrants. They will NOT be joining up with racial minorities, and it will NOT be the beginnings of Ignatiev’s hoped-for Marxist revolution. It will be the Balkanization of the U.S.
Much of the Katrina media focus is on blacks blaming whites. I think the lesser-told, but probably more important story, is that of whites who are sick of being blamed and who are looking at the looting and the racial violence against Aussies and Brits and other whites in the Superdome. Blacks blaming whites is old news, but the blogs are full of whites who are tired of it and seriously thinking about what their city would be like if something (terrorism, hurricane) were to attack where they live.
You see, Notherbob, you don’t get it.
I don’t have to say ONE THING.
The IMAGES speak for me.
There aren’t any “embedded” journalists on this one. The entire WORLD is seeing for their own eyes exactly what this nation is made of, and no amount of spin, hyperbole, and cliches are sufficient.
The indictment of America on race is cemented with the images of dead black babies and perhaps THOUSANDS of dead strewn amongst the muck of New Orleans.
Images of a government that FAILED THEM.
But you know what? Inspite of all that, I see a glimmer of hope in the volunteers who risked their own safety swooping in to save people. I see hope in those ANGELS at the Charity Hospital who worked round the clock saving lives, with no supplies…to the point where they were administering themselves I.V.’s when the water ran out. I see hope in sportsmen who took their bass boats in flooded areas plucking out survivors. The remaining NOPD, and New Orleans first responders who went through five days of hell, and stayed on the job saving people without backup deserve MEDALS. And the people–the survivors who LISTENED to instruction, persevered, suffered, yet didn’t break the law, waiting patiently to be rescued…heartrendering.
All those people above…transcended race, something I don’t believe their nation has accomplished yet.
–Cobra
I do not which is more trying on the soul of America
I read an article in the paper today in which somebody in Mississippi complained that there is a body in the street being eaten by rats and that the feds have not come in and removed it. You know, I will be damned if I would let a body rot in the street if I could get to it. Where in the world did people get the idea that they should sit back with folded hands and wait for the government to make their lives wonderful? Who is the government? It’s just more people. Cobra, I’ve been thinking about those medical people too. They lost their homes and went without clean clothes and electricity and running water just like everyone else but they never stopped working and helping others and trying to solve the problem in front of them. I’d like to think that would be me in that situation, not “Come get me! I’m mad because it took you so long!”
“The mainstream media’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and the disasters in New Orleans is a disgrace, possibly the worst instance yet of media bias.”
I can’t believe they had the gall to report things before chertoff and brown knew of them.
Cobra, I’m black. I have relatives who used to live in New Orleans. They’re not rich. My cousin is a jack of all trades, painter, plumber, etc. They left before Katrina. They took the warnings seriously. I agree that the government failed them, but I don’t think it was a conspiracy by Bush. The governor of LA and the mayor of New Orleans are at fault. They seemingly made no plans at all.
I also agree with the folks saying this is not going to teach America whatever liberals think it will. The more we see hysterical black folks on TV making completely irrational accusations the more it will rebound to the credit of conservatives. Stick to the facts, people.
John, Thanks for bringing up this topic. It’s one that has me seeing red right now. I remember telling my husband before the wind even died down that it was going to turn into a big black/white issue. It has, and it is so bad that I can’t even watch the news anymore, my deep feelings of sympathy for the victims being slowly replaced by utter disgust at the totally countereffective posturing of politicians and the continual sensationalization of the news by the media.
Laura, you ask where people get the idea to wait for the government to make their lives wonderful. Well, I would say that we are looking at a huge segment of society that has been conditioned for many years to do just that – depend on the government for everything and not have to actually think or do anything for themselves. I can tell you I would not have been sitting there waiting for help. I would have packed up what I could and walked, swum, hiked, boated, floated, or hitchhiked my butt (and those of my family) right out of there. If I had to camp in the woods, live off of worms, whatever…I wouldn’t be sitting around waiting to be helped.
As far as news coverage, I was watching Japanese news yesterday, and the clip they showed was of a Japanese reporter interviewing an angry black woman pointing out that her little girl had recently had a liver transplant and “those police had my baby on the ground with a gun to her head!” So, so much for any kind of neutral reporting in the international community as well.
Fenella,
I’m glad to hear that your cousin made it out in time.
I agree with you that the government failed them.
I do NOT agree with your placing blame at the feet of the Governor of Lousiana and the Mayor of New Orleans when the storm affected THREE STATES…Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
This is a tactic of Karl Rove and the right winged media flacks for Bush.
“Blame it all on blacks and liberals.”
There are WHITE MAYORS in Mississippi right now screaming that relief aid didn’t reach them in time, and that they’ve received little or no federal assistance. I don’t see ANYBODY on cable news pointing any fingers at Council of Conservative Citizens’ boy Governor Haley Barbour. I don’t hear any major stories about the Casinos in Biloxi being looted (and they were). That’s because that doesn’t play on the fears and anxieties of white America, and their fetish-driven tabloid fascination for the “wilding, lawless black gangster” is always a sure ratings winner. (OJ, Kobe Bryant, ANY gangsta rapper, etc.) There’s a well-publicized pair of press photos circulating around black blogs depicting whites and blacks with groceries, except one caption says the groceries were “found”, the other saying they were “looted”. Take a wild guess on the race of the people.
You see, Fenella, Mayor Nagin was not perfect by any means in this affair, but the disaster plan posted at the New Orleans website was followed.
>>>>>>”C. Infrastructure
Following a disaster of such magnitude that far exceeds the City’s and State’s ability to meet the needs of the community and results in the requesting and granting of a Presidential Disaster Declaration, the Office of Emergency Preparedness shall, as previously described, at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness, establish Disaster Relief Centers for individuals seeking recovery assistance. These sites shall be established at geographically strategic sites, providing all affected citizens with access to available programs, and shall provide representatives from numerous federal, state, local, and private relief agencies. Locations of the centers, as well as information on FEMA’s teleregistration program, shall be made known via ESF?14, Public Information, and all other available information outlets (see ESF?14, Public Information). ”
http://www.cityofno.com/portal.a…tal=46&tabid=26
And they also address the FOOD & WATER issues:
>>>Feeding and food and supply distribution sites shall be established following a disaster in geographically distributed sites across the Parish. Feeding sites shall be established by ESF?6, Mass Care, in conjunction with ESF?11, Food and Water. The Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army shall provide the lead in establishing and operating these sites. The Second Harvest Food Bank shall provide leadership in the acquiring and distribution of food and water. ESF?15, Volunteers and Donations, shall direct outside resources to the appropriate sites where these volunteer services can best be used.”
http://www.cityofno.com/portal.a…tal=46&tabid=26
But again, Katrina “far exceeded the City and State’s abillity to meet the needs of the community”.
The problem was, shelters of last resort were only supposed to shelter people for a day or so. Think about it…if you were to give ONE BOTTLE of water a day to 100,000 people, you’d need HALF A MILLION bottles, somewhere sheltered from the storm. I don’t want to even discuss food.
And did Nagin bail out on his people?
Hell no.
>>>>>>”
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 2, 2005; Page C01
His city is under water. There’s no electricity, no water to drink. Broken gas lines cause flames to erupt from filthy floodwaters. Mobs loot stores and exchange shots with police. Hungry people fight over food. Dead bodies float through the streets while the living huddle on rooftops, awaiting rescue.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin stares at the apocalyptic wreckage of his city from a window in his makeshift command post in the Hyatt hotel, which sits across a flooded street from City Hall. His wife and three children have been evacuated. He has sent most of his staff to higher ground in Baton Rouge. But he remains behind, like a captain determined to stay with his sinking ship.
As New Orleans has sunk into looting and violence, Mayor Ray Nagin has remained calm and focused. (By Cheryl Gerber — Associated Press)
“He’s gonna be there until this thing turns around,” says Don Hutchinson, the mayor’s director of economic development, speaking on a cell phone from Baton Rouge. “He’s showing the leadership a mayor should show.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp…5090102413.html
I would define him as courageous. His own Chief of Police was nearly kidnapped on the streets. His officers were under fire, shouting out calls for backup because they were running out of ammunition during shootouts with gangs and looters. 200 of his officers walked off the job, probably overwhelmed by the horror scenes of dead bodies and destruction all around them. Two of his officers committed suicide.
He wasn’t in a fortified bunker like Rudy Giuliani constructed at City Hall in New York. Nagin’s City Hall was underwater, and his headquarters was the blown out hotel across the street, every bit as vulnerable to the elements–no power, no air conditioning.
The local radio station, WWL still had generator power, and Nagin used that means of mass communication at his disposal to put out the SOS, and to light a fire under people who were SLOW TO SEND RELIEF, which was OBVIOUS to EVERYBODY in the WORLD except people who will defend Bush to the death, apparently. What was Bush doing during this apocalypse on Tuesday?
http://news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=…capm10208301856
This man could’ve teleported out to a safe dry location and did the podium press conference circuit. He opted to STAY IN TOWN and try to save as many lives as he possibly could.
I will defend this man any day of the week, because I know the vultures at Fox News have already chosen his black face as the scapegoat for all of this.
Criticism is being taken by the Governor for not federalizing the Louisiana National Guard. The fact is that if you FEDERALIZE the guard, they by LAW, CANNOT engage in law enforcement activity.
>>>”The Posse Comitatus Act is a federal law of the United States (18 U.S.C.
I can solve your dilemma, King Arthur. The most trying thing on the soul of America is sanctimonious ass hats such as yourself who, believing that they are an integral part of the
I think you are on the right track with the
“There’s a well-publicized pair of press photos circulating around black blogs depicting whites and blacks with groceries, except one caption says the groceries were ‘found’, the other saying they were ‘looted’. Take a wild guess on the race of the people.”
Cobra, I guess you didn’t get the memo.
“A Salon article on the photographs by Aaron Kinney suggests the captions were a result of a combination of contexual and stylistic differences:
Jack Stokes, AP’s director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. ‘He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods,’ Stokes said, ‘and that’s why he wrote “looting” in the caption.’
“Regarding the AFP/Getty ‘finding’ photo by [photographer Chris] Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, ‘This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we’re being careful with how we credit these photos.’ Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that if Graythen didn’t witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn’t say they were looting.
The photographer who took the Getty/AFP picture, Chris Graythen, also posted the reasons behind his caption:
I wrote the caption about the two people who ‘found’ the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not ‘looted’ them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water
ArthurS
I do not which is more trying on the soul of America
Sorry. My apologies to Arthur as well, and to any readers who were offended.
“I think you are on the right track with the
Norm Geras has a good round-up of what is going on in America after Katrina:
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/09/usa_now.html
Not today, Notherbob. You see, having a PHOTOGRAPHER (not a journalist) EXPLAIN something in hindsight that was not placed in the caption is not going wash this time. No sir.
Second, attacking Aaron Broussard and trying to compare him with the Jessica Lynch fabrication by the Pentangon is simply unbelievable, because look at the sources for your story. You’d have to call Walmart and their truck drivers, the US Coast Guard, and Broussard’s Sherrif’s department, all with no connections, “co-conspirators” in a propaganda campaign to make FEMA look bad.
And Michael Brown, the FEMA director you’re defending, Notherbob?
>>>”The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows…
…And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position…
…The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.
The agency, run by Brown since 2003, is now at the center of a growing fury over the handling of the New Orleans disaster.”
http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=100857
Come on, Notherbob..let’s hear it. Let’s hear your defense of the same kind of PREFERENCES I’ve been firing back at you anti-affirmative action types since DAY ONE of my posting here.
Michael Brown is NOT QUALIFIED for this POSITION, but a FRIEND got him the Job, and his failures are probably part and parcel resulting in the tragic loss of human lives.
Spin that one, Notherbob.
Laura,
Yes, the photographer explained the photographs, but it isn’t sufficient. Look at the photographs AGAIN. There is no background, no store to be seen. Just three people wading through the water. Two of the whites with groceries, and one black with groceries. The whites “found” groceries.
The black “looted a grocery store”. The fact is, even by the PHOTOGRAPHERS admission, nobody PAID FOR THE GROCERIES. That’s why Yahoo News offered an official apology here.
>>>Yahoo! News regrets that these photos and captions, viewed together, may have suggested a racial bias on our part. We remain committed to bringing our readers the full collection of photos as transmitted by our wire service partners.”
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Rr2jVcBniIwJ:gratefuldread.net/+Yahoo,+apologizes,+black+looters&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
But this will all shake out. There will be hearings, court cases and public testimony. This is not the runaway bride story, or Terri Schaivo. This story will haunt America as long as it exists, because it didn’t have to happen this way.
The most important job of government is to protect its people. It failed miserably this past week.
–Cobra
Cobra, the point is that there were two different photographers who individually captioned those pictures. If you’ll notice, Yahoo even got them from different news services. One photographer said he saw the stuff floating out of a store but you prefer to believe he’s lying about that. Because you don’t see a store in the picture, as though that snapshot were a 360-degree panoramic view? Please. You aren’t relieved to find that the stranger who captioned that picture didn’t show himself to be a racist, you’re insisting that he’s a lier so that you can also believe he’s a racist. This is somebody you don’t know, and you want to think he’s a racist. Why?
And not only that, you also want to accuse white America of racism because Yahoo put up a couple of pictures side-by-side. I thought my newspaper was incredibly insensitive because after the front section full of heartbraking pictures of New Orleans, one of the inner sections started with a huge blurb about the movie “Return of the Zombies”. But I don’t think they did it on purpose. I give them enough credit to just think they’re idiots.
Cobra, if racism is alive and well in the USA, you shouldn’t have to be making up stuff to demonstrate it.
cobra,
what about the Robinson accusation that blacks where eating bodies to stay alive? What about the stories of racial violence and intimindation by blacks against whites caught in the storm.
Why don’t you try not acting like the worst kind of racist stereotype and stop escusing the violence and mayhem that occured in NO?
Laura writes:
>>>One photographer said he saw the stuff floating out of a store but you prefer to believe he’s lying about that. Because you don’t see a store in the picture, as though that snapshot were a 360-degree panoramic view? Please.”
Why do you believe the photographer?
–Cobra
“One photographer said he saw the stuff floating out of a store ”
that makes it not looting?
Because he was on the scene and I wasn’t. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say “I saw this” whether or not what they say fits my worldview. Otherwise I run the risk of circular reasoning and close-mindedness.
Cobra, if you want to know why people scroll past your “evidence” of how America is rotten with racism, this is it. You insist on seeing it everywhere you think you possibly can, even when, as in this case, it has been debunked. In fact, I believe you want to. That impacts your credibility.
Actus, yes. Duh.
“Actus, yes. Duh.”
why is that? its not like the stuff doesn’t have an owner. If my TV gets carried out of my house in a flood, its still my tv. The same as if my house had been destroyed and only my TV remained.
I’m reminded of why I said I would never again engage Actus in conversation.
actus, I don’t think “looting” is the right word for people carrying away food and water in a disaster of this magnitude, whether they broke into a building to get at it or not. But in ordinary speech there’s a distinction between breaking into a building to take something and picking something up that’s in a public street (or in this case floating several feet over a public street). If I find a crate by the side of the road and it’s full of grapefruit, it’s reasonable for me to assume that they fell off the back of a truck, and that they are someone else’s grapefruit. But taking them home with me is not quite the same thing as breaking into a grocery store and lifting a crate full of grapefruit. Either might be defensible, if I were starving; but they aren’t the same act.
Cobra, I have no reason to doubt that the photographers’ explanations of the respective captions are accurate, and neither have you. As laura said (following Snopes), they came not only from different photographers but from different news agencies, with captions already attached. If there is pervasive racism at work here, where does it lodge? In Photographer A, who saw someone take stuff off a store shelf and called it “looting”? [NB: I don’t think that’s the right word, as I said above, but others might differ.] In Photographer B, who saw someone else pick up floating groceries in the middle of a flooded street and called it “finding”? In Yahoo, for publishing both photos without reconciling their captions? Or all of them together? (Thought experiment: suppose it had been the white man “looting” and the black man “finding.” Would you be outraged? Would you even notice? Would anyone have noticed?)
“If I find a crate by the side of the road and it’s full of grapefruit, it’s reasonable for me to assume that they fell off the back of a truck, and that they are someone else’s grapefruit. But taking them home with me is not quite the same thing as breaking into a grocery store and lifting a crate full of grapefruit.”
Finders keepers? I just dont’ see the difference.
What if you didn’t break into the grocery store. You walked in via the open door? finders keepers?
How about my TV example?
actus,
OK, we’re getting further away from New Orleans and reality every minute here, but can you perhaps acknowledge a distinction between picking up a dollar bill off the sidewalk, on the one hand, and walking into someone’s house (finding the front door wide open), seeing a dollar bill on the coffee table, and pocketing it, on the other? To me they seem very different acts, but YMMV.
Your “TV example” is somewhat damaged by the fact that a TV carried away in a flood would be useless, except maybe as a doorstop. Also, if it got very far, there’d be no way to determine whom it belonged to.
All of this is complicated by the fact that in NO, grabbing food and water, whether inside a store or outside, can’t reasonably be called “looting.” People are without food; people are without water; no one in his senses would deny that they ought to take what they need to survive. The real “looting” question comes with other goods, and here I think my distinction works. If you see a DVD lying on the sidewalk, you “found” it. If you see a Blockbuster store apparently undefended and go in and take a DVD, you “looted” it. If you do the latter and claim you did the former, you’re acknowledging the distinction.
Its amazing that blacks would be so exploited by their own leaders and buy into it. The Mayor ripped off the city and condemned the city to a disaster. He could have evacuated the poor and did nothing. He left the poor to suffer. Do we hear about it? Do the Cobras admit it?
I can only hope the troops got all the snipers and looters.
“If you do the latter and claim you did the former, you’re acknowledging the distinction.”
In either case, I’m ending up with someone else’s DVD.
If I can tell that the goods came from the store (say, by floating away), have I “found” them as much as the guy who walked in?
just like fish have trouble defining water? What a peculiar (or should I say stupid?) analogy. What, exactly, do fish not have trouble “defining”?
actus,
In either case, I’m ending up with someone else’s DVD.
When I was a kid, I found a sterling-silver pen on the sidewalk somewhere round Lincoln Center. Obviously it wasn’t “my” pen, and maybe at a later age and with better sense I would have taken it to Juilliard’s Lost and Found (though in truth it was probably lost by someone with nothing to do with the school, who wouldn’t have thought to look there). But I think it would be an exaggeration to say that I “looted” it when I wiped the dirty slush off it and took it with me.
It’s a little different, as you say, when it’s obvious just where the “lost” material came from. People have reasonably been described as “looting” an overturned truck when what they’re actually doing is taking spilled boxes from the ground next to it. But I still think there’s an instinctive distinction between going into a private space and taking whatever you feel like vs. picking it up off the street or out of the flood. I still have that silver pen, but I’d feel a lot differently about having it if I’d seen it through an open door sitting on someone’s table and just helped myself to it.
First,
Thomas Jackson writes:
>>>Its amazing that blacks would be so exploited by their own leaders and buy into it. The Mayor ripped off the city and condemned the city to a disaster. He could have evacuated the poor and did nothing. He left the poor to suffer. Do we hear about it? Do the Cobras admit it?
I can only hope the troops got all the snipers and looters.”
I tried to post a long, scathing post last night, but it never made it up here. So before going to work, I’m going to be short and to the point.
Three questions, Thomas.
1. Did this Hurricane stay within the city limits of New Orleans, or did it affect people in multiple states?
2. If it DID affect people in multiple states, how can you blame the Mayor of New Orleans for failing to save people in Florida, Missississippi, Alabama and the rest of Louisiana?
3. If your suggestion that Ray Nagin as a “black leader” is only responsible for “his people”, are you suggesting that no American President, including the current one, have ANY responsibility to blacks, since all of them have been white?
Now, second…both Laura and Michelle say they have no reason to question the photographer’s account of his “finding/looting”. My point is that there are rampant accounts of at the best gross negligence, at the worst racism in the treatment of the black people who survived the hurricane in shelters in New Orleans. Take one example, from FOX NEWS’ Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera, who vehemently argued against host Sean Hannity last Friday night about the conditions at the Convention Center.
>>>”Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera were livid about the situation in NOLA as they appeared on H&C. When Hannity tried his usual spin job and said “let’s get this in perspective,” Smith chopped him off at the knees and started yelling at him saying, “This is perspective!” It was shocking…
…Geraldo who I’m no fan of was crying, holding a little child up to demonstrate the extremely inhumane conditions these people are forced to live under. Forced is the right word because they are locked in the dome by our government and can’t leave. Troops are guarding the bridge.”
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hannity-Colmes-Smith-Rivera-freak-in-NO.wmv
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hannity-Colmes-Smith-Rivera-freak-in-NO.mov
So there were CHECKPOINTS keeping people who need aid from LEAVING the shelters? OK. So why didn’t aid that was needed get to the people at shelters who COULDN’T LEAVE on their own AFTER THE HURRICANE?
>>>”Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.”
http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html
>>>”By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.
Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.
“The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,” said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
“Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders.”
Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.
Though frustrated, Hosler understood the reasons. The goal is to move people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep them there. Security is so bad that she fears feeding stations might get ransacked.
“It’s not about fault and blame right now…”
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.
Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.
“The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,” said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
“Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders.”
Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.
Though frustrated, Hosler understood the reasons. The goal is to move people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep them there. Security is so bad that she fears feeding stations might get ransacked.
“It’s not about fault and blame right now…”
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
There are RAMPANT stories of FEMA blocking volunteer releif efforts. While the National Guard can go to Iraq and face insurgents with roadside bombs, rocket propelled grenades and suicide bomb packs, they were not dispatched to secure either New Orleans OR TOWNS AND CITIES ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI COAST.
>>>”HOUMA, La. — Six National Guardsmen — all from Houma and nearby southeast Louisiana towns — were among those killed when a bomb blast struck their patrol vehicle in Iraq.
Sgt. Christopher Babin
The soldiers with Task Force Baghdad were on patrol Thursday evening when their Bradley fighting vehicle hit the explosive, the military said in a statement. Everyone inside the Bradley was killed.”
http://www.theneworleanschannel.com/news/4061916/detail.html
Talk to me about how Ray Nagin had ANYTHING to do with the above, Thomas?
–Cobra
Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans Hero of The Black Poor Not So Fast”
While berating everyone he could except himself, Ray Nagin has attempted to proffer himself as a champion of
the Afro American poor and other poor.
Mr. Mayor you record says it just ain’t so.
Consider lack of experience in government and the job of Mayor. Elected to serve 2003 – that is 1.75 years
experience.
New Orleans Mayor C Ray Nagin:
By Josh Fecht, US Editor
“He(Nagin ) became the first New Orleans Mayor to rise to the post in nearly 60 years
without holding a previous elected office. ”
Consider lack of support by the black electorate. Less than half.
Rod Dreher
July 31, 2002 9:00 a.m.
Big Sleazy Sobers Up
C. Ray Nagin takes New Orleans.
“Behind the dramatic headlines lies a fascinating, and indeed hopeful, sign of bedrock
political change: the emergence of the black middle class as a distinct power player in
municipal politics. New Orleans is a majority-black city, with African-Americans making up
64 percent of the electorate. Nagin was elected with 58 percent of the total vote in the April
runoff, which amounted to about 80 percent of the white vote, and 44 percent of the black
vote.”
Lack of experience and political ineptitude?
http://bizneworleans.com/70+M538503905ee.html
Lonely at the Top
May 1, 2004 01:31 PM
by Kathy Finn
“On the surface his supporters see the same striking image that helped sweep Nagin into
office
Um, bryan, that was . . . excessive.
Bryan,
I’m certainly not the guy to criticize ANYBODY for making lengthy posts on “Discriminations.” Heck, I might be the record holder. But two of the things I’ve learned through trial and error while posting here is that:
A) Longer posts don’t neccessarily mean you got your point across. More than likely people start to tune it out, and facts you think are important could be lost in the voluminous text.
B)Sometimes, whether you know it or not, you may be arguing against the very thing you set out trying to support.
Like I said, there are many times I wish I had the talent with targetted brevity that Actus has, but sometimes passion gets the best of me, so I can understand. But if your point in making this post was to disparage Mayor Ray Nagin, you need to remember where you are. This is “Discriminations”, and to John Rosenberg’s credit, for much as I disagree with him, is NOT a haven for bumper-sticker, playbook, knee-jerk conservative echo-chamber rants. People on THIS blog, for the most part are so well-read, educated and experienced in their lives that serious
examination of topics from all viewpoints are reviewed here. That’s why I post here, and on many topics, just drink in the fascinating discussions.
Bryan, what I’m trying to say is, “letters to the editor” aren’t great sources of information here.
Even the pieces examining Nagin you posted…most of which are at best NEUTRAL, with praise as well as criticism.
This is John Rosenberg’s “Discriminations.” John espouses a belief in “color-blindness”..that race shouldn’t be a factor in government decision making, so when you post quotes like:
>>>”Mayor Ray Nagin does not represent the hundreds of thousands of poor Afro-Americansresiding in New Orleans.”
or
“The ministers accused Nagin of
turning on the African-American community. Bishop Paul S. Morton Sr., of Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, publicly referred to Nagin as
“Now, second…both Laura and Michelle say they have no reason to question the photographer’s account of his “finding/looting”. My point is that there are rampant accounts of at the best gross negligence, at the worst racism in the treatment of the black people who survived the hurricane in shelters in New Orleans.” Cobra, what has racism of the treatment of black people in shelters got to do with whether a photographer accurately described what he saw? And by the way, what is that photographer’s race? I don’t know. Do you? And you do realize that there were white people and Asians in the Superdome, right?
In your response to Bryan’s comment, you correctly say that John believes race shouldn’t be a factor in government decision making, then immediately assert that the Discriminations crew (of whom you are one, don’t forget)would applaud statements like “Mayor Ray Nagin does not represent the hundreds of thousands of poor Afro-Americans residing in New Orleans.” This makes no sense.
Also, I want to tell you a little story. Years ago I was on the 4th floor of a hotel in Virginia at 11:00 at night when I heard the fire bell. You couldn’t mistake it. I went downstairs immediately, of course. It turned out that the wiring in an elevator down the hall from my room had shorted out and the wallcovering was smoldering. It generated enough smoke to set off the alarm, and I was told that people whose rooms were down that hall could smell it. I want you to know that most of those people waited for the firemen to go up those stairs and tell them to leave. One of the handful of people who left when I did pointed to those people who trooped down the stairs after the firemen came and said, “Those are statistics. When you read about ’74 people killed in hotel fire’, those are the people you are reading about.” I realized right then that a distressing number of my fellow humans are capable of acting like stupid sheep who don’t have a clue about taking care of themselves. Why anybody has to be told, when a Category 5 hurricane is bearing down on them, to evacuate, is beyond me. I realize that some people may be too old or sick or whatever to take care of themselves, but a whole lot of the people you see in those pictures don’t fit those categories. For able-bodied folks with cars or money for bus fares, I don’t think the mayor, the governor, the head of FEMA, GWB, or anybody else needs to apologize for whatever situation they found themselves in. Maybe that sounds cold. I can’t help it.
Laura, I do think that’s “cold.” New Orleans is (was) a city with a lot of poor people, a low rate of car ownership, and not much of a reputation for law and order at the best of times. I think that a lot of people might have balanced the risk of staying against the risk of leaving and coming back to find their homes not flooded, but ransacked. Throw in the number of hurricane “false alarms” Gulf Coast residents have inevitably heard over the years, and it is not difficult to see why people might rationally decide that they’d better just tough it out. Dumb, in retrospect? Sure. But understandable.
I used to commute from San Rafael to San Francisco via ferry — more fun than taking the bus over the Golden Gate Bridge, and (at that time) the same price. Once, post-9/11, an alert went out that there might be a terrorist attack on the Golden Gate within the next week. The next day, the ferry was jammed to capacity with people afraid to go anywhere near the bridge. This lasted a week, until the governor called off the alert, at which point all the new ferry-riders went right back to their cars.
My point is that these folks were anxious not to be “statistics,” but perfectly idiotic about it. The governor says the bridge might be hit? Don’t go over the bridge. The governor then says maybe it was a false alarm? Fine, the bridge is safe! I’m afraid that government officials (at all levels) have to balance alerting people to genuine threats and being blamed for raising unnecessary alarms, vs. not being alarmist enough and getting blamed for that. Evacuating a major city is no joke. I’m not excusing anybody involved (beginning with the city administration, which might at least have read its own emergency plan), but there are dangers on both sides here.
Cobra,
The right winged Karl Rove conservative media strategy for this whole Hurricane scandal is to blame everything on ONE MAYOR (black Democrat) and ONE GOVERNOR (female Democrat). Their flacks in the media, especially Fox News are determined to lynch Ray Nagin, especially with the ridiculous bus story, to hide the DEPLORABLE, INEXCUSABLE performance of the Federal Government, led by a FEMA director named Mike Browne whose total disaster experience before gaining the role was a job at the “Arabian Horse Association”.
You’re the last person in the world I would have expected to use “lynch” as a rhetorical flourish, Cobra. I thought better of you.
But as long as I’m here, explain the “ridiculous bus story,” please. If you have a large number of municipal buses, a large number of poor people with no cars, and a mandatory evacuation order, is it completely ridiculous to note that someone ought to have thought of using the buses to evacuate the people who otherwise have no means of getting out of the city? Yes, I see the logistical difficulties (beginning with the fact that everyone licenced to drive the buses had probably already fled the city), but so far as I’ve read no one even considered doing anything with the buses at all. Not even, say, moving them to higher ground so that they could be used to move people out when the storm had passed.
Michelle, the governor saying this-and-that is exactly what I’m talking about. Anybody with sense who knew that a Category 5 hurricane heading toward their city – especially NO with its levees we’ve been hearing about for years – had to know they needed to get out. There’s no law saying you have to wait for an evacuation. Again, I’m talking about able-bodied people with cars or money. Why wait for somebody to tell you what to do? The mayor’s just another person, isn’t he? Does the governor have a crystal ball?
Laura and Michelle,
I need your help on this one, and let me tell you why. I don
Cobra,
Sorry to take so long in responding. Thanks for the kind words.
I don’t know what to make yet of the case of the British tourists evacuated from the Superdome. It doesn’t seem to me implausible that they felt themselves in imminent danger. And, yes, everyone was in imminent danger, but not necessarily of being assaulted by other people trapped there.
A hypothetical here: Suppose it isn’t 20,000 (or whatever) blacks and 100 (or whatever) white tourists, but 20,000 (or whatever) men and 100 (or whatever) women, and the women are honestly fearful about what is going to happen to them when they’re massively outnumbered and the people surrounding them look like they need to take out their aggression on something or someone? Do you move the women to other quarters (NB I don’t think being housed with the “very sick” in that environment is necessarily luxury)? Or do you leave them there?
I don’t know what the right response is here. I do know that if there was a serious prospect of violence, removing the potential targets would be the obvious first response.
As for your second point, about the parishes listed in the emergency order, obviously it isn’t “ignorance of geography,” because no one would claim that Bush (or anyone else, really) could rattle off the names of a couple dozen Louisiana parishes, while just forgetting to mention all the most obvious ones.
So, yes, it was obviously “deliberate,” in the sense that those parishes were omitted on purpose. What the purpose was, I don’t know; but if I had to guess, I’d say that most likely the state intervened somehow, wanted to handle the apparent crisis point itself, something of the kind. There are reports of the Feds begging the state and local authorities to ask for help so that they could legally supply it. I don’t know whether that’s true either, but it’s more plausible than the theory that Bush wanted New Orleans destroyed because he looked forward to seeing a lot of dead black people.
And can you please explain about the buses? Because, as I said above, it looks as though no one even thought of using them or indeed getting them someplace where they wouldn’t be flooded, and could at minimum be used later. This is, well, dumb. Dumb in a way that kills people. FEMA quite obviously had its head up its *ss (still does — the latest this morning was that the arrangements the Red Cross made for NO evacuees in SF won’t be used because FEMA isn’t letting people be evacuated out of state — sheesh) but there’s lots of blame to go around here.
FNC’s Major Garrett had some verifiable facts and figures on the situation, and he summarized them last night on O’Reilly.
Apparently, FEMA DID hold up shipments of food and water to the Superdome. HOWEVER, the fact behind that is that the Louisiana Dept of Homeland Security was in control at the time, and they ORDERED FEMA and the Red Cross to NOT bring aid to the Superdome. Their reasoning was reportedly that they intended to evacuate the Superdome, and therefore did not want to create a ‘magnet’ to draw more people there.
The Feds (FEMA, Homeland Security, etc) can currently NOT just get involved (unless an attack or act of war is involved) UNLESS the State (in the case, Louisiana) SPECIFICALLY AND FORMALLY REQUESTS their assistance. The Governor of Louisiana controls the National Guard, which does NOT answer to the federal government except in times of war or attack – which this was not.
Funny, but the States of Alabama and Mississippi didn’t have these kinds of problems. Oh, but they formally requested federal involvement BEFORE the hurricane made landfall. The Governor of Louisiana had to be BEGGED by the President to request aid 3 DAYS AFTER landfall. Maybe this had something to do with the slow federal response in Louisiana?
It just flabbergasts me that so many are still willing to jump to the conclusion that these problems occur because of racism. Do you believe in black helicopters and secret societies of assassins, too? Sheesh, grow up and let go of the paranoid fantasies, already!
Claire writes:
>>>
Cobra,
Just out of curiosity, why do you suppose Gov. Blanco sent a letter to the President asking for a state of emergency to be declared 8/26 and dated the letter 8/27? I mean, I realize the executive power has some stretch in it, but there are limits.
Michelle writes:
>>>”I don’t know what the right response is here. I do know that if there was a serious prospect of violence, removing the potential targets would be the obvious first response.”
That’s fair. I would agree with you more if the evacuation was expedited, or if the shelter population was allowed to leave on their own. That explaination does nothing to quell the feeling that priorities were decided based upon race, but you did as good a job defending what happened as I’ve seen.
Michelle writes:
>>>”So, yes, it was obviously “deliberate,” in the sense that those parishes were omitted on purpose. What the purpose was, I don’t know; but if I had to guess, I’d say that most likely the state intervened somehow, wanted to handle the apparent crisis point itself, something of the kind. There are reports of the Feds begging the state and local authorities to ask for help so that they could legally supply it. I don’t know whether that’s true either, but it’s more plausible than the theory that Bush wanted New Orleans destroyed because he looked forward to seeing a lot of dead black people.”
OK, at least you can see the reality of what happened. I find it difficult to believe that greater New Orleans was exempted from federal relief from the State, because of these two paragraphs from the above Press Release I posted from the Governor:
>>>”Under the provisions of Section 501 (a) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C.
Michelle writes:
>>>”Just out of curiosity, why do you suppose Gov. Blanco sent a letter to the President asking for a state of emergency to be declared 8/26 and dated the letter 8/27? I mean, I realize the executive power has some stretch in it, but there are limits.”
I don’t know. It probably has some legalese behind it. If you notice, however, the President’s declaration of emergency does the same exact thing.
>>>”For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 27, 2005
Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana
The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.”
There’s probably some time limit statute or constraint out there. Don’t know for sure. I’ll look it up, though.
–Cobra
Cobra,
I see what you mean about the emergency order from Blanco, and I’m at a loss for an explanation. “Bush is evil” and “Bush is an idiot” won’t do. Bush doesn’t relish heaps of dead Americans of whatever color, and he also can’t relish the incredible cost (monetary and political as well as human) of this disaster.
This is why I can only assume that New Orleans and surrounds were left out of the order for some reason involving who had jurisdiction over what. No other explanation makes sense. The only trouble, as you’ll have noticed, is that I don’t have any evidence beyond the obvious total lack of motive (and in fact whopping great incentives to aid New Orleans before we were talking thousands dead and hundreds of billions to rebuild).
We’ll have to wait and see, in other words.
Re dating of Gov. Blanco’s memo and the response: Who knows? Maybe predating it guarantees an extra day’s cash from FEMA or something. Strange way to do that, though.
Cobra, I wish I had some words of wisdom for you, but I don’t. There are some truly inexplicable things being reported about what happened last week, a lot of really dumb quotes from some people who should know better, (B. Bush, good lord) and a lot of contradictory stuff, too. I’m sure you’ve seen this:
http://wizbangblog.com/archives/006994.php
Is he telling the truth? Covering his butt? Being misquoted? I don’t know. I wish I did. I do know that the one experience I have had with FEMA several years ago only served to convince me further that the people in charge are frequently idiots. Here are two quotes for you: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. And: The scariest words in the English language are “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” (Don’t know where the first one came from, but I’ve seen the second attributed to Ronald Reagan.)
Here’s another confusing article.
http://www.radioblogger.com/