Ahhh, nothing like another disaster whose magnitude forces me to crawl out from my cave and actually want to see news coverage. But, it's mere moments before I need to run screaming far away from reality because (1) OK, this ain't brain surgery, to quote a former professor and (2) could I have some actual analysis of why the circumstances are what they are. Is that too much to ask?
I listened to one news commentator/anchor ask some question about whether the New Orleans residents in the SuperDome were allowed to go outside. Now, I suppose it could have been an innocent query as opposed a value-laden message suggesting that those in question were either prisoners or somehow lost their right to exercise their freedom to move.
But there is hope tonite with PBS's
NOW's "Katrina: Why the Devastation Was So Bad" an update to a 2002 piece where it took on just such a question what happens when a big hurricane hits the Gulf coast. The original reporter, NPR's Daniel Zwerdling , will be in the house. (Props to
truthout.org for the data bit.)
PBS Airdate: Friday 02 September 2005 at 9:00 p.m. on PBS.
(Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.)
What you don't know about Katrina and the Gulf Coast. NOW investigates why the devastation was so bad. With the death toll rising and the damage estimates in the billions, NOW reports on why New Orleans was virtually defenseless against hurricane Katrina. ...explores how one of the biggest civil engineering projects in US history-the levying of the Mississippi River-set off an environmental chain reaction that helped destroy the natural barrier protecting New Orleans from catastrophic storms.
Aside from the fact that I consider W. the best worse case example of a legacy child and mediocrity, I can only fantasize that some good will emerge from the cascade of disasters now embodied in the latest miasma -- Katrina's aftermath; the good would occur if somehow, some way more people could see fit to heep more blame on W.
What can I say, I want a leader who sees a global community; the good leader owns the current situation as well as the detritus and barnacles along for the ride -- even if he knows they are external to his control and admininstration. Instead the best that W. has to offer is a tautalogy: well those who are now suffering in New Orleans are poor are Brown; that's why they are suffering. They are what they are.
So I've been incredibly reductionist but it's not that far off the mark.
And, the science writer for the
Houston Chronicle wrote on Dec. 1, 2001:
"New Orleans is sinking.
"And its main buffer from a hurricane, the protective Missis sippi River delta, is quickly eroding away, leaving the historic city perilously close to disaster. ...
"So vulnerable, in fact, that earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country." The other two were an earthquake in San Francisco and a "terrorist attack on New York City."
No comments:
Post a Comment