Why is it so hard to get news on NOLa??
Aug. 31st, 2005 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
A friend called me late last night, distraught, because she'd heard that the levees were breaking and New Orleans was almost entirely under water. I turned on the tv and skimmed through all the broadcast stations (I don't have cable) and there was no indication that ANYTHING was happening anywhere. Sitcom reruns on the commercial channels, something intensely boring and vaguely nature-related on public television. No news crawl, nothing. I went to the CNN website and they had pretty much the same news and pictures they'd been showing all day - outlying areas flooded, long shots of the Superdome with the outer skin flaking off by no water nearby, etc. Nothing about levees breaking. So I talked my friend into believing that nothing had changed and went to bed.
The morning paper confirmed that she was essentially right. 80% of the city was now submerged. Canal Street was, well, a canal. Severe damage in the French Quarter, giant trees torn out by the roots in Jackson Square. Oh my God!! I turned on the radio on my way to work, and again, NOTHING. The only station that even acknowledged that one of our great cities was being devastated was MPR, and they just had an interview with some jackass who was intoning about disaster relief and risk management in the abstract with barely an acknowledgement of the fact that a disaster was currently unfolding.
What is going on here? I realize that we're all suffering from hurricane numbness after what happened to Florida last year, but the magnitude of this is beyond any of those storms. Katrina was 200 miles wide. Hundreds of thousands of American citizens are homeless, hundreds dead (at the least). And the levees are crumbling around one of our most beloved historic cities, with 10,000 refugees huddled in an unreachable and leaky shelter in the middle of rising waters. And the same tv stations that will run a 2-hour continuous-loop screen inset about a thunderstorm in Mower County don't even turn on a news crawl?
Is it because these people are... Southernors?
The morning paper confirmed that she was essentially right. 80% of the city was now submerged. Canal Street was, well, a canal. Severe damage in the French Quarter, giant trees torn out by the roots in Jackson Square. Oh my God!! I turned on the radio on my way to work, and again, NOTHING. The only station that even acknowledged that one of our great cities was being devastated was MPR, and they just had an interview with some jackass who was intoning about disaster relief and risk management in the abstract with barely an acknowledgement of the fact that a disaster was currently unfolding.
What is going on here? I realize that we're all suffering from hurricane numbness after what happened to Florida last year, but the magnitude of this is beyond any of those storms. Katrina was 200 miles wide. Hundreds of thousands of American citizens are homeless, hundreds dead (at the least). And the levees are crumbling around one of our most beloved historic cities, with 10,000 refugees huddled in an unreachable and leaky shelter in the middle of rising waters. And the same tv stations that will run a 2-hour continuous-loop screen inset about a thunderstorm in Mower County don't even turn on a news crawl?
Is it because these people are... Southernors?
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Date: 2005-08-31 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 04:50 pm (UTC)K. [thinks it is now 20,000 in the Superdome, with more sleeping on the freeway which is the high ground]
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Date: 2005-08-31 05:03 pm (UTC)Susan
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Date: 2005-08-31 05:14 pm (UTC)I'm finding it utterly ridiculous how "normal" life is going on with what seems like little awareness of the worst disaster in contemporary American history. I've been glued to CNN for days, hardly wanting to move lest I miss anything.
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Date: 2005-08-31 05:54 pm (UTC)And, finally, back in 2001 this report said the three most catastrophic disasters facing this country are a terrorist attack on NYC, a hurricane hitting New Orleans and a San Fransisco earthquake. FEMA is now two out of three, but the Bush administration and the conservative news media just don't want to talk about how they were asleep at the wheel. Twice. (Watch out SF!)
Now that a red state has gotten the shaft from the chickenhawks, will their politics change? Nah...
(Yes, I'm mad.)
Not even a nice try.
Date: 2005-08-31 06:26 pm (UTC)As for the chickenhawk crack, are you seriously suggesting that only veterans and active duty military should have anything to say about war and military affairs? That sounds pretty bizarre coming from you. I would have thought you'd be the last person advocating that kind of government. If that's not what you mean, would you care to explain exactly what you do mean by it?
Wow, are you wrong.
Date: 2005-08-31 06:54 pm (UTC)Strain of Iraq War Means the Relief Burden Will Have to Be Shared
Third paragraph: "National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops -- most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001."
You have a) misquoted me (I never said "all") and b) are trying to hand wave away the fact that National Guard troops, traditionally under the command of the Governor of the state, are now being used as soldiers far more than they were in wars past.
are you seriously suggesting that only veterans and active duty military should have anything to say about war and military affairs
I said no such thing and you know it. This is why conservatives have no credibility anymore: People are dying and you're just dangling a straw man. I'm not going to play your PC games.
The reality is that Bush and the other chickenhawks have consistently ignored warnings of terrorist attacks and the potential for natural disasters on the homefront. Why you defend them is beyond me; I had thought better of you.
Re: Wow, are you wrong.
Date: 2005-08-31 07:57 pm (UTC)I was trying to clarify what you meant by "chickenhawk". The term gets thrown around a lot by people who don't seem to think through the implications of what they're saying, and I meant it when I said I wanted to know what you meant by it.
Re: Wow, are you wrong.
Date: 2005-08-31 11:47 pm (UTC)"Primary"? Dual, perhaps. The governors fought tooth and nail for the right to keep the National Guard under their command, not the Federal government's. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court and lost... in the 80s. (So much for States Rights.) I'll take your word for it about some of the wars -- certainly in Vietnam, they weren't used as much (as you point out) -- but "support units called up" doesn't seem to describe the situation today. Traditiaonally, the National Guard is literally that: a national guard. They serve the homefront, which only occasionally means being called up for active military duty in a foreign country.
(Aside: While the National Guard was roughly half the troops in Korea, that's because "The principal strength of both organized reserves and National Guard lay in the fact that much of their personnel had seen combat service during World War II." so that was a special case that doesn't apply to Iraq. Similarly, the role of the US military changed during and after WWI and the war (for us) was shorter than the Iraq war so far, so I don't think that example applies either.)
I was trying to clarify what you meant by "chickenhawk".
Why?
I make the point, twice, that the Guard have not been around to help US citizens in times of disaster because they're off at Bush's war, and you haven't responded to that point. Your knee jerk reaction to one word seems like an attempt to change the subject more than to discuss the situation in NOLA.
I tell you what: You respond to the main issue (possibly not here; let's let dreamshark's thread take a break), then explain to me why you are curious about "implications" of a fairly straightforward description, and I'll point you to some websites that should change your non-chickenhawk mind.
Re: Wow, are you wrong.
Date: 2005-09-01 12:57 am (UTC)Because I am legitimately curious what you mean by it. Not everything is political, even (especially?) for a Falangist Libertarian like me.
Actually, I did respond to it, in my first reply. Most of the Louisiana Guard is still home in Louisiana, and the Guard units in other states are being mobilized to assist. This article (http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050831/NEWS01/50831019) from the Indianapolis Star mentions that 10,000 Guard troops are being mobilized in addition to the Guardsmen already activated in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and this news release from the National Guard Bureau (http://www.ngb.army.mil/news/story.asp?id=1738) mentions over 120,000 troops in the affected states. So I think it's not accurate at all to say that the Guard isn't available since they're off fighting in Iraq.
Done.
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Date: 2005-08-31 07:26 pm (UTC)I have no doubt that mistakes are being made and inefficiences are happening in the disaster relief, but I'm actually in awe over how effective it has been. A city of 500,000 is 80% underwater right now, due to an unstoppable natural disaster, and the death toll looks like it will be in the hundreds (horrible), not the 100,000s (unthinkable). Thank God NOLa built their stadium out of something sturdier than the oversized weather balloon we have in Minneapolis, and I only hope the rest of the roof holds up!
Deepest sympathies to your brother and his family. I'm relieved to hear they are okay, but it's hard to imagine how they will cope with such a loss.
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Date: 2005-08-31 11:19 pm (UTC)Re: No news? Good news?
Date: 2005-09-02 12:37 pm (UTC)They thought about 2/3 of the 900,000 in the NO metro area got out, so that means 100,000 may still be the total.
I mean, we'll never know for sure. Yipes.
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Date: 2005-08-31 10:00 pm (UTC)No news? Good news?
Date: 2005-09-01 02:13 pm (UTC)Re: No news? Good news?
Date: 2005-09-02 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 02:48 pm (UTC)Susan