Is the US broke, dumb, completely inept, viciously cold-heartedly racist/classist, or all of the above?
Liza Sabater asks if the US is really actually broke. I’ve never seen the question posed that way, and it gave me a moment of pause. Is it possible the US gov and its uber-cronies have siphoned away almost everything into their own pockets at this point?
I was touched and moved to see some MSM reporters showing actual authentic… well, authentic anything — emotion, opinion, outrage (see Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera (of all people)). Still, as danah and i were talking about last night — why isn’t there a massive discussion going on everywhere about the race and class issues here? I know those threads are going on to some degree in the blogosphere, and I’ve seen a ton of angry opinion even from MSM, but not a lot about what seems obvious we need to be talking about. If anyone knows if and where those discussions have started and live, please post up in the comments.
tagged: Hurricane Katrina, Katrina
Update: Leave it to the BBC… [Thanks, Elizabeth]
Update 2: Oh look, Barbara Bush is talking about class. She’s just thrilled for all those poor and under-privileged who are now finally getting to live The Good Life… in the Astrodome.
September 7th, 2005 at 7:43 am
I’ve seen an interesting and generally adult conversation on these issues unfolding over the environmental historians’ listserv (H-ENVIRONMENT) over the past few days.
I’d especially like to see a case study comparison of preparation and response to Hurricane Charlie (Florida, 2004) and Katrina.