The News

I have been riveted to the cable news coverage of the hurricane aftermath. It's been fascinating and disturbing to watch.

During one half hour on Thursday, I switched between Fox News and MSNBC. The commentator on Fox referred to the "criminal element" and wondered what to do about these looters and shooters no less than 5 times in that half hour. And that was with switching back and forth. MSNBC was beginning to realize the lack of relief effort and was calling for more help.

By Friday, Fox had changed its tune. I'd never seen reporters get so emotional about what was happening. Later that night, they sent Geraldo (can you imagine? 4 days without food or water, you're locked into the convention center, and here comes GERALDO? What, it's not enough to ignore us, they're going to torture us too?) and he cried and gnashed his teeth over the state of affairs there. Now, this is Geraldo, so whatever...but then they switched the camera to Shepard Smith, who expressed amazement that the government can set up checkpoints to make sure no one leaves NO but can't deliver water. Smith said, "They can't go a block and half that way, where there's food and water and hope! Over there there's hope! Over here there's nothing!" Sean Hannity cut in with "a little perspective." Smith knew he was being cut off and smoldered at the camera. The anchor asked, "When will the relief get there?" Smith growled, "I have no idea."

More on the Fox coverage here (totally liberal anti-Fox site, BTW). What gets me is all the exclamations of, "This is happening in America??" We have very poor people in America who couldn't evacuate the city. We do not put these poor people on the top of our list of "people to save." There were priorities, and evacuating the poor was not one of them. OK, they didn't know the levee would break. But why did it take so long for FEMA to realize that thousands of people were in the convention center when we knew it out here in California?

There is racism and classism in America. I frequent a message board that is heavy on conservatives, and I see lots of people who aren't getting it. They get mad whenever anyone brings up the idea that race may have played an issue in this disaster, or play dumb and laugh at the idea that a hurricane is racist. They defend the government and accuse the refugees of creating their own problem. They brush the concerns off as just more Bush-bashing. If one good thing comes out of this, it will be that racism and classism will be put on the table in a way it hasn't before. But my fear is that many will just refuse to acknowledge it, so the "discussion" will continue to be one-way.