What’s fast becoming evident as the devastation from Hurricane Katrina unfolds
is the fragile chasm in this country between rich and poor, and yes – black and
white – fraying, once again at the edges as inextinguishable frustration grows at relief efforts hampered by scores of displaced victims too shell-shocked, scared or angry (most likely all three) to help stem the confusion and unrest that seems to intensify with each passing hour. What’s being done to stoke the stereotypical conclusions being drawn regarding such behavior is another matter.
The 800 lb gorilla-like presence of the broadcast media and the more scattershot eyewitness accounts of bloggers paint a kaleidoscopic view of heartbreaking loss and utter chaos – what Peter Jennings would have referred to as ‘the first draft’ of a truly historic and horrific event – hastily reported with an emphasis on overstatement and under-enlightenment. But such observations will have to do until we get a clearer picture of the reasons for the growing tide of victim resentment. (Scott Gold’s LA Times piece comes the closest – describing Superdome refugees forced to sleep in their own urine, a child being raped, inhumane unsanitary conditions including enduring human feces on the walls)
What is painfully becoming clear, however, is the unnecessary cadre of incendiary voices stepping up add their two cents to a tragedy screaming out for clear-headedness. The true irony is that the worst offenders to date emanate from quarters that pride themselves on ‘detached’ observation, with Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan getting my vote for biggest offender to date. In her WSJ column on September 1st, Ms. Noonan felt it necessary to keep score of the tragedy so far, as if it were akin to the U.S. Open, or some other end-of-summer ritual she is no doubt more suited for analyzing then a catastrophic drama of biblical proportions being played out on a mostly non-white stage.
Of course, the always loquacious Ms. Noonan couldn’t finish a column without invoking God, or conservatives next-best candidate for the job, Rudolph Giuliani, Republican icon of choice for sideline-slinging-wingers like Ms. Noonan who draw him like a gun no matter the calamitous event - ‘Thank God, (he) was in charge’ – she writes, recalling the sentiments of the New Yorkers she presumes to speak for.
Ms. Noonan casts Mississippi mayor and longtime Republican hatchet man Hayley Barbour in what she calls ‘the Giuliani model’ in her column, short-handing for us the cost-benefit analysis political gurus like Ms. Noonan do whenever a crisis arises that they have no stake in – working overtime to steer the grazing herd of conservative sideline-shills into championing Barbour, or someone/anyone from their camp – QUICK - before the real focus of the tragedy becomes the people who actually deserve the media attention – those angry, frightened, abandoned non-white victims of hurricane Katrina coming to a righteous boil under the glare (and stench) of the Superdome.
Oh, and speaking of guns – Ms. Noonan even sees fit to touch on that prickly subject, advocating firing on the so-called looters – ‘I hope the looters are shot’ - in the same paragraph she trivializes the terrible conditions people are experiencing there as a ‘bad time with Mother nature.’
And then, with all the usual hubris she has learned to pack in her pristine diatribes she obviously believes are making a difference in somebody’s life, Ms. Noonan patriotically chastises the victims she’s just had executed: ‘I wonder,’ she writes ‘if the cruel and stupid young people who are doing the looting know the power they have to damage the country, I wonder, if they knew it they’d stop it.’
Let’s turn that question around a moment for our own big finish. I wonder, Ms. Noonan, if the readers who swallow your self-righteous pap realize you write this nonsense from an ivory tower light-years removed from the poor people fighting for their very lives in the underwater hellhole formerly known as New Orleans, I wonder, if they’d beg you to stop.