Friday, September 02, 2005

Is The Media Responsible?

A cold splash to the face of white middle-class America is New Orleans, eh? Imagine, then, what it's been like in Baghdad lo these last couple of YEARS!! One administration chucklehead speculated the only thing worse that could happen to a city than what's happened in New Orleans is if a nuclear or chemical weapon were set off.

Oh, goody!! Dubya has us "over there so they can't get us over here," and meanwhile has so disemboweled our national guard and reserves, by putting them over there where they can't do any good over here -- and now we find the third worst thing that can happen to a city is beyond their ability to cope.

But back to my original point. Note all the video footage of the disaster unfolding in New Orleans: The wailing in the streets; the wanton death & destruction; the close-ups of lost souls seen thru their respective windows -- all because of the seemingly limitless access to the carnage for a suddenly fascinated media. The coverage has been 24/7, a marked contrast to the way the media portrays the war and by the way we've been prevented from bearing witness. It is remarkable nonetheless how the pain inflicted by nature upon the people of Crescent City seems not at all dissimilar to the considerably longer-felt suffering inflicted by the Bush administration upon the Iraqi people.

Why the difference, you wonder? It's because our military in Baghdad embedded the reporters, keeping them close as they would have their enemies closer. And reporters who dared venture off independently would run the risk of getting shot. And in New Orleans, the military is... uhm...

Just where the HELL are they anyway... ??

Well, Joe & Jane Couch-Potato, there you have it! You can't even turn on your TV now without having the insanity of thousands of people chanting "Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!" shoved down your fatted gullets, now can you? And I betcha didn't know you could have been seeing that same shit every day for the last three years had you only tuned into the BBC.

Love it or don't, we're seeing it now like we've never before. And that is a healthy development. Even better news, the coverage is now shining a bright light, as it had been so remiss in doing throughout the Bush presidency, on the glaring shortcomings of the man, the gaping void in his character, and his inability to lead as revealed. And the growing consensus would seem to comport with what so many of us have known from the beginning, that George W. Bush is at best a callous and empty suit, but, more importantly to America's standing in history, so criminally incompetent that an uncorrupted Congress wouldn't think but to quickly convene to debate his removal from office.

And that is why progressives have despised the Main$tream media.

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