Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Questions from the right… (from a friend)

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– Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?  

– Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn’t solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

– Why isn’t the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago? When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines? Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

– Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?

– When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a “vanilla” Iowa, because that’s the way God wants it?

– Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

– Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

– How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

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  1. …they “find food”:

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    p>I don’t like to get into “who suffers worse” arguments, I’m sure some people in the midwest floods have been as traumatized and lost as much in there tragedy as some people along the Gulf did in 2005. I don’t want to minimize what happened to those midwesterners and they deserve the support of the federal government and the National Guard (who are probably not helping because they are in Iraq or Afghanistan.)

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    p>But Katrina was a much bigger event that happened in a much shorter, localized time frame. Right now, the midwest flood death toll stands at 13 and damages are estimated in the hundreds of millions. Katrina’s death toll stands at 1,836 confirmed and 705 missing and damages are estimated at $90 Billion.

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    p>The loss of life and devastation wreaked on the Gulf Coaast in 2005 is far more similar in magnitude to 9/11 then the current midwest floods.

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    p>I also get the impression from your tone, your other posts, and this recitation of Rush Limbaugh/Hanity talking points that you don’t care about the people afflicted by the midwest floods as much as you care about degrading the people victimized in 2005 by Katrina and by the government’s negligence.

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    p>Will you be talking about the people in Iowa 2 weeks from now without griping about Katrina and big screen TVs?

    • I don’t like to get into “who suffers worse” arguments,

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      p>I agree with you tblade that this was not a contest. But I guess my point was why are there such differing reactions in disasters and celebrations or any other event where authority figures (cops…) are not around? Why does Hollywood react so differently to an Iowa flood vs. World AIDS events? BTW, you can’t compare the limited fundraising and celebrity exposure of Jay Leno for the midwest to what Hollywood did for Katrina.

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      p>Many people complain about soundbites and I think your example from the press showing “looting” vs. “finding food” was a visual soundbite, both on the news media’s part and yours. I had no problem whatsoever with people, black, white or green, going into stores to get food if they were stranded or hungry. Or for that matter, stealing a boat if they were helping people or saving their lives. But people who were running down the streets of New Orleans breaking windows to loot should have been shot dead. There is no lower form of humanity that those who take advantage of situations like this and steal.

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      p>The disaster in the midwest is huge to the people of the midwest, but I’m sure they will not be helped like the people in New Orleans. But they will survive and they will rebuild and all of us should be very proud of their courage and hard work.

      • The looting was exaggerated. The University of Delaware Disaster Research Center concluded:

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        Regarding the media’s reporting of looting, findings suggest that reports made by the media had an impact on operations and citizen responses. Likewise, findings imply that the media was not always accurate in reports of looting made in the postdisaster time period.

        Along with reports on looting, many citizens made reference to prosocial behavior that occurred in the aftermath of the disaster. It was the belief of many of those interviewed that the majority of citizens behaved positively and went out of their way to help one another. In regard to law enforcement officials, preliminary findings revealed instances in which an organization used the collective definition of looting to shape its actions.

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        p>More on media Katrina exaggeration from a 2005 LA Times article.

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        p>Moreover, where’s the line? How does one determine what is essential and what is frivolous, especially in the split second it takes to fire a life-ending shot? How do we know a person is taking clothing for her and her family because all they owned was destroyed versus someone taking clothing just to take clothing? On the HBO documentary “When the Levees Broke” someone talks about a person in a panic grabbing the box of a flat panel tv hoping that the box would float for support even thought the tv sunk to the bottom. It’s sounds stupid that a person would think a tv box would float, but not everyone is a rocket scientist and the brain is highly irrational in times of panic.

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        p>Were there criminals in the Gulf Coast? Sure. But as the excerpt points to above, the coverage of the criminal behavior was not balanced out with stories of people who did extraordinary things to help each other.

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        p>I’d also say that accounts of looting were also not balanced with the abhorrent, equally lawless phenomenon of “over-enthusiastic” vigilantism that went far beyond protecting individual property and person. Here’s a video excerpt from the Danish documentary Welcome to New Orleans:

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        p>This book excerpt from Mother Jones briefly discussing vigilantism.

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        p>As for the last line in your comment, I’m no more or less proud of the survivors of the midwest flood then I am of people who survived Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi.

        • This is one reason I don’t like all the links and URLs which people want. If need be, I could find support and/or facts for anything I want. I saw looting firsthand on the TV and they didn’t look like they were grabbing hamburgers or anything else deemed necessary for survival. But then I could be wrong, it happens.

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          p>Thanks for the exchange and while my mind was not changed, I do see how others with similar views to you are seeing this. Thanks.

          • Well, isn’t that nice? You can find stories.

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            p>But you don’t.

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            p>What are you doing here then?

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            p>If you don’t believe in evidence or URLS or links or facts and you want to show off your unchanged mind, why comment here at all? Why not just write in your diary? What’s the point?

            • I was challenged on my views of NO so I found tons of URLS and links defending my position. OBTW, I could have found tons of stories showing my view was wrong too. So what? As I have mentioned before, people who believe in most things will simply ignore the “proof” provided with URLS anyway. I even asked exactly what metric I needed to go find to prove NO was not a very nice place but never got an answer.

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              p>Why am I here… Why are you here. If all you are going to do is use URLS or links you could skip using your brain and simply point people to news stories and other people’s opinions. So let’s debate if John McCain is tough on crime (URL, URL, URL, URL…) but I say he’s soft on crime (URL, URL, URL…). BORING (and yes I used CAPS). I am not saying you don’t need evidence to back up some statements, but not everything you say.

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              p>And again, many posters tell me to back up my statements but I read posts on this page every single day where people opine with no backup data and nobody ever says a word, except when I post something.

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              p>It has been frustrating having a dialogue with you, but I can’t lie and say you haven’t made me think of things differently. But I do think you need to be a little more open minded and less up-tight.

              • I thought it was a “friend’s post”.  

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                p>You resorted to two useful rhetorical devices commonly used by those wanting to duck responsibility for what they say: (1) posing statements as a questions and (2) attributing these quasi-statements to a third party.

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                p>And yes, huh is right. You cast aspersions. You don’t have a clue what a liberal might think — well, maybe a dimwitted one or a a cartoon liberal on a conservative cartoon network. So your “I know what you’ll say” stuff just makes everything muddier and less pleasant.

          • We ALL could find stories that reflect looting – that’s my point. Looting of luxury goods by criminals who wanted to exploit the situation, although very real, was over-represented in the media. There were far more incidents of self-reliance, the community coming together, and pro-social behavior in Katrina  and its wake then is occuring in the midwest right now, but because the looting was more sensational it’s easier to find in the media. Also, the media did not talk about the lawless, “shoot anyone not like us” vigilantism.

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            p>A September 2005 New York Times article, titled “Fear Exceeded Crime’s Reality in New Orleans”, sheds further light on how reports of actual criminal looting became exaggerated into modern myth and in some cases was incited by police:

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            What became clear is that the rumor of crime, as much as the reality of the public disorder, often played a powerful role in the emergency response. A team of paramedics was barred from entering Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, for nearly 10 hours based on a state trooper’s report that a mob of armed, marauding people had commandeered boats. It turned out to be two men escaping from their flooded streets, said Farol Champlin, a paramedic with the Acadian Ambulance Company.

            On another occasion, the company’s ambulances were locked down after word came that a firehouse in Covington had been looted by armed robbers of all its water – a report that proved totally untrue, said Aaron Labatt, another paramedic.

            A contingent of National Guard troops was sent to rescue a St. Bernard Parish deputy sheriff who radioed for help, saying he was pinned down by a sniper. Accompanied by a SWAT team, the troops surrounded the area. The shots turned out to be the relief valve on a gas tank that popped open every few minutes, said Maj. Gen. Ron Mason of the 35th Infantry Division of the Kansas National Guard.

            “It’s part of human nature,” General Mason said. “When you get one or two reports, it echoes around the community.”

            Faced with reports that 400 to 500 armed looters were advancing on the town of Westwego, two police officers quit on the spot. The looters never appeared….

            A particular target was a Wal-Mart….The looters told a reporter from The Times that they followed police officers into the store after they broke it open, and police commanders said their officers had been given permission to take what they needed from the store to survive. A reporter from The Times-Picayune said he saw police officers grabbing DVD’s….

            One of the officers who went to the Wal-Mart said the police did not try to stop people from taking food and water. “People sitting outside the Wal-Mart with groceries waiting for a ride, I just let them sit there,” said Sgt. Dan Anderson of the Sixth District. “If they had electronics, I just threw it back in there.”

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            p>In the week after Katrina, there were 178 looting arrests arrests in New Orleans. 178 doesn’t sound as catastrophic as some would make the looting out to be, especially when we wonder what constitutes looting for legitimate reasons and we realize that some of the looting charges were just made up. Merlene Maten, a 73-year-old church deaconess and diabetic was arrested for “looting” when she got a sausage out of her car, then imprisoned for 16 days:

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            MATEN: On Tuesday after the hurricane, they had a lot of water, we were lodging at Motel Six, and they had a lot of water out there.  I first went down to get some water to flush the toilet.  I went back down again and there were a lot of people out there, so I went to my car to charge my phone and to get some sausage out of my car, the trunk of my car.

            Well, I saw people scattered around but I didn’t know what was going on.  So as I got my sausage and I looked down and there was a policeman there.  And he called me, come here, and I went over to him.  I looked up first, and I went over to him, and he said that that was out of some store and I was looting….

            HOST:  Your position is that the sausage that she had isn’t even sold at the deli that was looted, correct?

            BECNEL [Maten’s Attorney]:  That’s correct.  And also that they piled up other items, the police did, and if you had seen the items, there’s no way Mrs. Maten could have handled all of those items.

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            p>The media sensationalized the looting. I’m not saying that criminals didn’t exploit the tragedy or that every looter was innocent “food finders”. But I am saying that the evidence shows that the image of looting of post-Katrina New Orleans that often gets portrayed by detractors is largely a myth, blurred by ambiguity of “looting” vs “survival”, government-sanctioning of some looting, false arrests, and arrests falsely categorized as looting.

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            p>There is no objective data or evidence to support the right wing version of events that over-states how many people were ransacking New Orleans in search of luxury electronics and designer fashion. We’ve all seen the pictures of people grabbing items not “necessary for survival” – it happened – but pictures aren’t objective data and they don’t give the complete picture.  

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            p>You ask in your post, “Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?” Well, I ask where were those people in New Orleans? Can you give me facts about how many sneakers and TVs were looted in the aftermath of Katrina? You say we should “tolerance for people with differing views”. Fair enough, but in turn it’s not unreasonable for us to want to see the facts and evidence upon which you base your views.  I hope you base your strong opinions on the reality of evidence and fact rather than a few pictures, Fox News, and bias against certain people.  Without facts, all you’re left with is the myth.  

            • From MSNBC –

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              NEW ORLEANS – Mayor Ray Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission Wednesday night and return to the streets of the beleaguered city to stop looting that has turned increasingly hostile.

              “They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas – hotels, hospitals and we’re going to stop it right now,” Nagin said in a statement to The Associated Press.

              • …any idiot can find stuff about looting. I go out of my way to say that criminal looting was very real. You need not prove to me that people stole stuff like “food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets – even guns.” I agree that it happened – multiple times in this thread even.

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                p>Not to mention, I provide several articles in other comments that show articles similar to what you just posted to be over-representative and exaggerated.

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                p>I ask again, can you give me facts about how many sneakers and TVs were looted in the aftermath of Katrina? Or any looting stats at all? Or is your conclusion based on out-dated reports from the chaos directly following the storm?

                • I could provide “articles” but as you mentioned these biased articles are not fact. In addition, based on the chaos directly after the storm and the following weeks/months, I’m sure hey had bigger fish to fry (controlling the murders and robberies) and looting arrests and eventual convictions may have been put on the back burner. So I will have to “give in” on this since I have no stats… nor did I see any stats from you or others to change my mind (news articles are too biased and “out-dated”).

                • None that I could find, at least. But 178 looting arrests the first week is the best that I can do.

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                  p>I’m not saying that I know exactly what went on or that I can prove the degree to which “real” criminal looting went on, I just wanted to make the case that there is more to the story then how it is portrayed by the people who say that the people of New Orleans are just scumbags who used Katrina as an opportunity to steal TVs and exploit the nation’s sympathy. To me, the bad people – from any neighborhood – look to be in the extreme minority and when discussions of Katrina come around all the positives including self-reliance, communities coming together, volunteerism and all the legitimate tragedy and trial of the people of the Gulf get filtered out and disqualified by the “outrage” over the minority of people, many of whom were mis-portrayed or mythologized in the first place.

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                  p>I don’t want to detract from your point that there were bad people. I don’t want to advocate against individuals and law enforcement protecting and securing property and person. I do want to say that Katrina and the aftermath aren’t so simple that we can boil it down to the 8 rhetorical questions posed in this post and an entire region of people who suffered shouldn’t be based solely on tv-stealers and people without the fiscal or financial means to risk leaving on 24-hours notice, and that’s why I have been diligent on this post. Let’s take in the whole story and when we discuss the topic, tell the story as a whole.  

                • as they portray things to sell advertisements. All we have to do is look at the weather forecasts of upcoming blizzards in New England only to get a dusting. The hype in the weather forecast is probably no different from the sensational stories of rapes and murders happening in the SuperDome which came to proven false. I have a differing opinion of you and others on this site and sometimes I think different. My only real defense is I see very similar tactics that I use, used by other bloggers on this site in their comments. I sometimes 🙂 generalize about Liberals, Democrats, minorities, immigrants… and I read bloggers generalizing about Conservatives, Republicans, Whites, Rich people, Corporations… What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

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                  p>The best posts from people I disagree with are thoughtful, meaningful and civil. I appreciate your efforts along this line on this post.

                • On the rare occasions people on this site have generalized about whites, it’s actually been done by white people and it’s not always negative.  

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                  p>You, on the other hand, have generalized about Jews, Hispanics, and Blacks (just that I’ve seen) and all negatively. As always, people are free to draw their own conclusions.

  2. why won’t conservatives just let it go, and admit that the federal response to hurricane katrina was a massive failure of the bush administration? like everyone else recognizes.

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    p>let it go . . . .
    it wasn’t ray nagin

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    p>let it go . . .
    it wasn’t kathleen blanco

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    p>forget those school buses that were left parked in some lot somewhere.
    . . . . just let it go.

    • but I think it was a failure of the Federal government. BTW, bloggers on this site are always angry at me for lumping Liberals together so maybe for consistancy you shouldn’t lump conservatives together, or is ok for everyone but me?). And I used BOLD on that remark for the bloggers who complained that my nonuse of such formatting made my arguments weak (go figure that out).

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      p>I guess my differences are I think the Mayor of NO was extremely guilty of poor judgement and a lack or response. I think the Governor of LA was guilty as well. Certainly the politicians who didn’t fund the Army Corp of Engineers to do infrastructure repairs in the preceding years left their DNA on this crime.

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      p>I visited NO 3 months ago (looking for Sean Penn’s rescue boat) and was shocked by the devastation and persistent danger from the citizens of NO. Then again I had never been there and since have heard it was a SH&*hole before the hurricane. I asked the cab driver what it was like and he said he left 2 days before the hurricane and drove to Baton Rouge. He said they news people were warning people for days to GET OUT but many people just ignored the warnings and stayed there. I know you will all reply that they had no means to get out, they couldn’t afford a bus, didn’t own a car, didn’t have a TV to hear the warnings…

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      p>A lot of money (our tax dollars) has been spent down there and much more will be spent. Hopefully, any and all the scumabgs stealing and scamming money illegally will be convicted and go to prison. The lucky ones are the people who left because of the hurricane and happily found lives in other parts of the country and will never return (except the ones who are in prison in other parts of the country that is).

      • Your dependence on talking points and aspersions(I knw you all will say…) rather than arguments makes your postings weak. The CAPITALIZATION just makes them irritating.  

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        p>For the record, 35 members of my family were displaced after Katrina.  My uncle didn’t get power back for a year.  You can share all the cab driver anecdotes you like.  You’re still talking out of your ass.  For example, they weren’t warning people for days to get out.   They were still letting flights in the day before…

        • Your dependence on talking points and aspersions(I knw you all will say…) rather than arguments makes your postings weak.

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          p>Exactly what should I depend on? As I have said a few times, people on this page constantly rant and rave about subjects with no backing. They are giving their opinion and that’s fine with me. If someone says “Obama is a great guy” do you require references? I do try to get some factual backing to some of my comments, if I find the time which is tough, and wonder what is acceptable to people like yourself. Much of the internet is full of more opinion vs. hard facts. More of it is full of reporting from news agencies (MSNBC, FOX…) who have an agenda which I will not partake in.

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          The CAPITALIZATION just makes them irritating.

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          p>Deal with it. It is a habit of mine to emphasis with CAPS. I have taken your criticism to heart and have greatly reduced it. In the above post I only capped GET OUT since it was used to emphasis a warning. Are CAPS NEVER (emphasis added) to be used?

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          For the record, 35 members of my family were displaced after Katrina.

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          p>Is there a point here?

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          My uncle didn’t get power back for a year.

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          p>Is this anecdotal like the cabdriver story?

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          You’re still talking out of your ass.  

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          p>Do you comment on people’s comments you agree with if they are talking out their ass?

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          For example, they weren’t warning people for days to get out.   They were still letting flights in the day before…

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          p>Are you talking out your ass huh?

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          p>[

          Sounds like warnings to me and this was prior to the hurricane…

          Nagin first called for a voluntary evacuation of the city at 5:00 p.m. on August 27 and subsequently ordered a citywide mandatory evacuation at 9:30 a.m. on August 28, the first such order in the city’s history. In a live news conference, Mayor Nagin predicted that, “the storm surge most likely will topple our levee system”, and warned that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico would be shut down.[10] President Bush made a televised appeal for residents to heed the evacuation orders, warning, “We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities.”[10] Many neighboring areas and parishes also called for evacuations. By mid-afternoon, officials in Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, Lafourche, Terrebonne, Jefferson, St. Tammany, and Washington parishes had called for voluntary or mandatory evacuations.”[11]
          Although Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city, many remained voluntarily, which a CNN writer described as “gambling with their own lives.”

          • Nagin calling for a voluntary evacuation 37 hours before Katrina’s landfall doesn’t bolster your claim they were “warning people for days to GET OUT”. I guess technically 1.5 can be denoted as “days”, but it’s not a hell of a lot of time.  

              • Not everyone is young, physically-abled, with enough financial resources and a car to fight traffic and drive 100s of miles inland to stay at a motel.

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                p> From the very link you provide above:

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                Despite [the evacuation order], many remained (mainly the elderly and poor)….Reasons were numerous, including a belief that their homes or the buildings in which they planned to stay offered sufficient protection, lack of financial resources or access to transportation, or a feeling of obligation to protect their property. These reasons were complicated by the fact that an evacuation the previous year for Hurricane Ivan had resulted in the illnesses of many elderly people since cars were stalled in traffic for six to ten hours. The fact that Katrina occurred at the end of the month, before pay checks were in the hands of many was also significant.

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                p>It helps if you read the whole thing and not just cherry pick that which is convenient to your argument.  

              • people don’t flee like hell when a hurricane is coming. some do, maybe all should. but in florida, north carolina, and yes, new orleans, some people who have withstood storms in the past (in new orleans, the big one was camille) figure they can batten down and ride it out.

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                p>and for katrina, they were right!

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                p>it was the levees failing that caused the disaster in new orleans! the direct storm damage was rather typical.

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                p>thus when the levees failed and massively flooded huge areas of the city, it was an unexpected curveball to those who stayed. and suggesting that these victims should be blamed somehow, would be like blaming the victims of the world trade center towers collapsing, for not anticipating that it was possible for them to collapse.

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                • I was simply making the point that if the people of NO had evacuated when they were ordered to, the situation would have been very very different. The damage and devastation would not have changed, but the many deaths and injuries would have been avoided.

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                  p>Many people ignore warnings of hurricanes, blizzards and other weather emergencies and most survive. Because of the media frenzy around many storms nowadays, it isn’t a surprise that we get a hyped up for the big one only to fooled and nothing happens. In this case it did happen.

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                  p>I don’t blame them for what happened but I do think if more of them did evacuate (and while I acknowledge there were elderly people and people without cars, but there were many many more who could have left but didn’t) when they were advised and then ordered to do, the outcome would have been better.

          • No, I’m not talking out of my ass.  As tblade so kindly points out below, the evacuation order came 37 hours before Katrina actually hit.  They actually thought it was going to hit earlier.

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            p>The point of mentioning my family is I have direct knowledge of the Katrina timetable, since I was on the phone with family and friends throughout.  I was also down there helping with the recovery, so have direct knowledge of the after effects. Having lived there, I also have direct knowledge of what the city was like before Katrina.

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            p>By comparison, your remarks about the Katrina timetable and NOLA being a shithole are based entirely on hearsay. Combined with your bizarre and baseless claim that “Hollywood” cares more about Katrina than Iowa (later modified to AIDS), yes, I do think you’re talking out of your ass on this issue.

            • like which Democrat is going to win the 99th Middlesex Senate race…

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              As tblade so kindly points out below, the evacuation order came 37 hours before Katrina actually hit.

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              p>Too bad more people weren’t as smart as the cab driver I met and left town early.

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              The point of mentioning my family is I have direct knowledge of the Katrina timetable, since I was on the phone with family and friends throughout.

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              p>I think that is called anectodal. Wouldn’t direct knowledge mean you were there?

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               I was also down there helping with the recovery, so have direct knowledge of the after effects.

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              p>When I talk about issues due to my “direct knowledge” growing up in Dorchester, people acuse me of having a bias and bringing my personal prejudices into the issue.

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              Having lived there, I also have direct knowledge of what the city was like before Katrina.

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              p>Then you must have seen first hand (really direct knowledge) how much of a shithole it was. People are always asking me for links to back up my facts. Looks like I could provide thousands of links to support this argument.

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              p>The numbers tell a grim story. In 2004, the year before Katrina, New Orleans suffered 265 murders, yielding a murder rate of 56 per 100,000 residents – already 4 ½ times the average for similar-size cities. In 2006, the year after Katrina, the flood-ravaged, much smaller city logged 162 murders – a rate of at least 77 per 100,000 people, even assuming the most generous quarter-by-quarter repopulation figures available. (New Orleans has recovered less than half its pre-Katrina population of about 470,000.)

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              p>In the first 64 days of 2007, New Orleans’s murder rate scaled even higher – more than 87 per 100,000 residents. Such a rate in New York City would mean nearly 7,000 murders a year, well over the 2,262 it experienced at the height of its violent-crime crisis 17 years ago. Story

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              By comparison, your remarks about the Katrina timetable and NOLA being a shithole are based entirely on hearsay.

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              p>How would you like the measure this since clearly SH is a subjective measurement. Shall we look at murder rate, rapes and serious crimes, illiteracy rates, single-parent children, poverty, disease, homeless rate, corruption, racial divide, per capita income, employment rate… Is there any statistic about NO that didn’t point to it as being a SH?? Are you going to defend NO like it was a thriving metropolis prior to George Bush commanding the winds to attack the city???

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              Combined with your bizarre and baseless claim that “Hollywood” cares more about Katrina than Iowa (later modified to AIDS), yes, I do think you’re talking out of your ass on this issue.

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              p>Don’t hate me. Please have some tolerance for people with differing views. Or maybe I need your compassion and continued education. You may not like what I have to say, and even faced with some ugly facts, you still may not believe it. There are many people in denial about the truth. And please send me a notice when MTV, Sean Penn, Sting, Angelina, Kayne West, Oprah and all the other Hollywood/celebrity groups start having a Midwest Flood Fundraiser? I don’t mean 1 event, but maybe when they equal 1/2 of the Katrina events.

              • Right now, the midwest damage total sits at less than 1/180th of the cost of Katrina and has 1/195th of the fatalities. What is it with you and Hollywood? Why are you bitching to us about Hollywood’s failure to help the people in the midwest, as if we had any control over what benefits Sean Penn and Oprah participate in? Why not start a letter writing campaign calling for these people to help the midwest flood victims instead of ranting to me and huh? For all these histrionics, your time could be spent actually doing something to help these people rather than shifting the blame to Sting and MTV, as if they are obligated to solve this crisis.

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                p>Seriously, the midwest floods are not like Katrina at all. Let it go. I get that you think that the people in New Orleans are lawless animals and midwesterners are patriotic, wholesome, God-fearing, self-reliant Americans who would never loot. I get it. But frankly it doesn’t seem like you give two shits about the people afflicted by this year’s flood, you just wanted to take the opportunity to express your resentment of the Black people and low-income White people of New Orleans and Hollywood celebrities. I’m fine with differing view points, but tenuously-supported, race-bating, blame-the-victim, Limbaugh-spawned talking points do not qualify as “ugly facts”.  

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                p>

                • In my post, I was trying to say we as a nation, the whole nation, react differently to differing situations. The post brought in FEMA, Hollywood, Celebrities, The President, crime… I think there is a difference and people like yourself and huh commented, which is great. I like dialogue. Certainly there were differences in the actual disasters as well, with the floods in the midwest continuing and the total costs still unknown. Your comparisons of deaths is irrelevant in my mind since they don’t cost money and don’t effect fundraising much. Also, the government has spent billions on waste, mismanagement and outright fraud so the cost is tough to compare as well.

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                  p>I never said anything about the midwesterners being patriotic, God-fearing or wholesome, did I? I did say NO was a bad place, complete with bad people and I still do, and I think the numbers back it up. I do care about people effected by the floods, but not enough to send them money. Is that the metric used to decide if we care about things? Have you sent money or started a letter campaign for “every” issue you care about? I don’t think so? You are not alone in judging others (like me) in manners different than we judge ourselves.

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                  p>Lastly, I don’t listen to Limbaugh and haven’t for many years. I used to listen all the time but got tired of listening to everybody agreeing with each other (like this blog sometimes). I like discussions and differing opinions, expressed with passion and sometimes edgy.  

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