Originally posted by Joey@Sep 6 2005, 11:32 AM
What did I miss? Katrina is prejutice against poor blacks in Louisiana? What has the media forgotten to tell everybody this time? My information shows the National Guard was activated quickly, and was making rescues around the clock. The military has been flying supplies in and people out. Somebody missed it. There is a big thing going on in the USA where the media does not tell good news, so people think nothing good is happening. Some celebrity who hasn't heard what is going on assumes that nothing is going on, so he says on a big news station that nothing is being done. A whole lot is being done, and has been done. Good news just doesn't sell, so the media doesn't push it.
I don't know - Boscastle's response was pretty good news and that sold pretty well. The USA response did seem rather lethargic, notwithstanding the sheer enormity of the disaster.

If it were Manhattan that got swamped, instead of New Orleans (which is equally as likely, given its position) I'm sure the federal resources would have been out there immediately, certainly a lot faster than it got to New Orleans, and Bush wouldn't have so dispassionately told the starving millions to "be patient" two days after the disaster had happened.

I'm always wary of people playing the race card (as in, "the response was slow because it's full of poor black people"), and I don't necessarily think there was anything deliberately racist in how the response was handled, but I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been a lot better handled had it been New York. Or Washington. Or somewhere that "mattered", strategically, to the government.

The US government's tactless and incompetent response to major disasters which don't directly affect it is neither surprising nor unprecedented - their first response after the London bombings was to ban their own soldiers from entering London "for their own safety" - this after spending years preaching how they would never kowtow to terrorists or let them affect their way of life.....