As the reader of our blog, you've been treated to months and months of no-cost, (mostly) editorial free entertainment. My brother (see "Justin's Blog" in the Links section) uses his online-journal to raise awareness about issues he finds interesting or important. I think this is a pretty good idea, and since I'm not interested trying to be the smartest guy at the party, I'll put an occational opinion on here for you to read or ignore at your leisure.
Don't like it? Well, I've decided that you've all been free-loaders for far too long now. In the spirit of good ol' fashioned American brand Capitalism... here's a word from our sponsor: me. (And since it's the American brand of Capitalism, there are alternatives to reading: stop reading whenever you begin to feel uncomfortable, proceed into your living room, power on your TV, change the channel until you see someone whom you find attractive, and have them tell you what to think. You can also just stop reading and go on the next picture posted above.)
Today's editorial: People who define themselves by their party politics and how dumb it makes them sound to other, wiser, more intelligent, and altogether better people.
You, as the rank-and-file, educated, middle-class American have a key role to play in our history... today. Without your intervention, our political process and therefore our very way of life will crumble. Let me start with a desperate plea: STOP WATCHING CABLE NEWS! Or if that is where you have your opinions implanted into your mind, at least split your time watching between the Conservative (read: Republican) views on FOX NEWS, and the Liberal (read: Democrat) views on CNN. Think you are immune to the spin? Think you are too smart for that?
How do you think the national response to Hurricane Katrina was handled? (If your reaction included something along the lines of: "That was forever ago, wasn't it?" Then stop reading right now, go out and commit a felony with the sole purpose of forfeiting your right to vote. Also, try and close your mouth when you breathe.) Chances are you watched the news and unequivocally accepted the coverage you saw (including the commentary) as truth.
If you're politics lean toward the idea that the only step remaining between us and a cure for cancer is electing Hillary Clinton to the White House, then you probably think President Bush created Katrina using secret weather controlling technology, paused just long enough to call all the rich (and predominately white) people to warn them, closed the roads behind them, finally sending the Hurricane hurtling into the poorly constructed levees built by his Republican buddies using public funds.
If you're of the opinion that President Bush rules with a mighty and omnipotent hand in utter benevolence over the lesser subjects of the Kingdom of American, then you probably think the Hurricane was a horrible disaster that dumbass people of New Orleans were too stupid to prepare for, too lazy to get out of the way of, and too greedy to do anything other than rape and pillage the City's aftermath.
The truth of the matter... both these opinions are as widespread as they are divisive. Boil it down, and people from all over the country were spewing some version of the nonsense above during the coverage of the disaster. Want to hear some facts that were actually checked? Check this story out from Popular Mechanics:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2315076.html . Is it all true? I don't know, I don't have time to fact-check every bit of media I read. But I'll tell you what, PM was in no hurry to fill 24 hours of airtime when they published this story in March of 2006. I wonder how much time CNN or FOXNEWS had to check the accuracy of the commentary continually drooling out of the mouths of their newscasters? Highlights are contained in the comments section of this post.
I hope that at least a couple of readers get this post for what it was intended. Because I'm not convinced my sense of humor translates well in type, my intention is not to insult anyone... if you've even navigated to this page (much less sat through my little rant here), then I value your opinion as it is. The point is to motivate people to be more critical of the media they consume.
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Exerpt from Popular Mechanics March 2006.
GOVERNMENT RESPONDED RAPIDLY
MYTH: "The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history."--Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005
REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.
KATRINA WASN'T A SUPERSTORM
MYTH: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."--New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, press conference, Aug. 28, 2005
REALITY: Though many accounts portray Katrina as a storm of unprecedented magnitude, it was in fact a large, but otherwise typical, hurricane. On the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale, Katrina was a midlevel Category 3 hurricane at landfall.
FLOODWALLS WERE BUILT PROPERLY
MYTH: "Perhaps not just human error was involved [in floodwall failures]. There may have been some malfeasance."--Raymond Seed, civil engineering professor, UC, Berkeley, testifying before a Senate committee, Nov. 2, 2005
REALITY: Most of the New Orleans floodwall failures occurred when water up to 25 ft. high overtopped the barriers, washing out their foundations. But three breached floodwalls--one in the 17th Street Canal and two in the London Avenue Canal--showed no signs of overtopping.
ANARCHY DIDN'T TAKE OVER
MYTH: "They have people ... been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."--New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Sept. 6, 2005
REALITY: Both public officials and the press passed along lurid tales of post-Katrina mayhem: shootouts in the Superdome, bodies stacked in a convention center freezer, snipers firing on rescue helicopters. Col. Thomas Beron, the National Guard commander of Task Force Orleans, arrived at the Superdome on Aug. 29 and took command of 400 soldiers. He told PM... There was one attempted rape that the New Orleans police stopped.
When the Superdome was finally cleared, six bodies were found--not the 200 speculated. Four people had died of natural causes; one was ruled a suicide, and another a drug overdose. Of the four bodies recovered at the convention center, three had died of natural causes; the fourth had sustained stab wounds.
Anarchy in the streets? "The vast majority of people [looting] were taking food and water to live," says Capt. Marlon Defillo, the New Orleans Police Department's commander of public affairs. "There were no killings, not one murder." As for sniper fire: No bullet holes were found in the fuselage of any rescue helicopter.
EVAC PLANS WORKED
MYTH: "The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that ... went wrong."--Michael Brown, former FEMA director, Sept. 27, 2005
REALITY: When Nagin issued his voluntary evacuation order, a contraflow plan that turned inbound interstate lanes into outbound lanes enabled 1.2 million people to leave New Orleans out of a metro population of 1.5 million. "The Corps estimated we would need 72 hours [to evacuate that many people]," says Brian Wolshon, an LSU civil engineer. "Instead, it took 38 hours." Later investigations indicated that many who stayed did so by choice.
THE ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE SURVIVED
MYTH: "You have a major energy network that is down ... We could run out of gasoline or diesel or jet fuel in the next two weeks here."--Roger Diwan, managing director, Oil Markets Group, PFC Energy, Business Week, Sept. 1, 2005
REALITY: Initially, the pictures from the gulf looked bleak: oil rigs washed up along the coast, production platforms wrecked. In truth, Katrina inflicted minimal damage to the offshore energy infrastructure. Only 86 of the gulf's 4000 drilling rigs and platforms were damaged or destroyed,
I wasn't there. I don't know anyone that was there. I haven't searched for more articles from various sources. I was simply struck by the inaccurate reporting the major news networks performed... without a single retraction or correction.
Although I aspire to be a life-long free-loader, I guess I'll chip in my two cents to keep the dialogue going.
As a stock market guy, I'm immersed in news flow all day long. During and after Katrina, the stock market channels (CNBC pumps through our office all day long - Down with Kramer - but that's another story) showed that the world is coming to an end because of the inept gov't response. Normally, CNBC (division of NBC and parent GE) tends to lean to the right in its political views... considering its audience. It is not as extreme as Fox (its hard for me to listen to Buchanan's view of American conservatism), but you'd never hear Hilary Clinton mentioned in a positive light (which works by me). What struck me as odd, was the way the network seemed to cave and portrayed the response with distinct similarity to the major networks. Most of the Nagin interviews were broadcast, most of the senate hearings were broadcast, even some of the editorial authors from the NY Times (definitely not the same market with which CNBC aligns itself) were broadcast.
It was a ratings game, as news is - it was popular, controversial, and like our "sponsor" wrote, mainly conjecture. Fiction always out sells Non-fiction - not that the broad strokes were made up, but I'd agree the analogy applies. The interesting part is how it will be used this fall, in the '06 elections. I think the images are still fresh in the minds of many and the finger-pointing will continue, as if some random representative could have done something about the federal response.
From personal preference, I read the Financial Times (the peach one) for US policy news. Based in London, the paper tends to offer a more objective stance, but again, skewed toward the right. I like the validation as I'm a shallow person.
PG
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