Is it just me, my fellow IW's, or is the media using that wonderful gift of 20/20 hindsight to find every thing they can to tell us what is going wrong with the relief effort in New Orleans? I'm getting to where I want to put my foot through my TV screen especially when I hear that the government, et.al., should have been more prepared, blah, blah, blah. Or how they focus in on the Superdome and the Convention Center as collassal failures but failing to elevate by the same focus about the thousands upon thousands have been rescued and sheltered. What really gets to me is how these critics really don't have a plan of their own but they can blast officials what they are doing so wrong. I'd like to tell them to their face to get out of their suits and ties, get into grubs and lend a hand.

I heard too many in the media say the feds should have been prepared, should have seen this coming. Excuse me? How does one get prepared for a 90,000 square mile disaster? Could certain things be handled differently? Yes. Will we learn from this? Yes. This is brand new territory for this nation to deal with so how does one prepare for catastrophy that covers an area as large as the British Isles when you never faced it before, never experienced it before? Despite our instant micro-wave generation, it takes time to mobilize such a massive effort of relief. But people don't want to hear this; they want it now even though rescue crews are being shot at.

Lastly, the thing that most gets my goat is the politicizing of this historic tragic event and using it as a means to bury G.W. Bush. Look, I don't like a number of things he has done, but when the NY Times criticizes his speech as the worst ever right smack in the middle of what is happening I throw up my hands. I truly believe the media is adding to the frustration and are not helping things much.


My heart goes out to the people down there and you can bet I'll be sending my money in. I married a Mississippi gal and my in-laws are from Gulfport. Somehow their house is still standing (with damage) -- one of the few. Thanks for letting me rant. I'm just so sick of the media.

Welcome to the world dude. If you don't have any cash, or no influence whatsoever, don't bother trying to mingle, you won't get accepted.

Uh... thanks, johnny (I think).

<font color=skyblue>He was referring to those that need aid, saying that poor people with no public voice can get forgotten.

By the way, speaking of forgotten, the media at least pointed to a problem that many are overlooking. There's more than New Orleans in trouble.

Here's a story about Bond Mississippi.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/kat....ap/index.html </font>

[ 09-02-2005, 08:01 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

Well, just to calm you down, BBC News 24 has just this minute given airtime to the guy coordinating the army relief effort who was telling us all about the 15,000 people that have been saved and how it was a great achievement.

Not all media follows the stereotype. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

As for panning President Bush over this, I accept that this is unprecedented in scale but equally the fact that a serious military presence is only arriving now is pretty inexcusable. The 'get behind the President' mentality often seems to let him off the hook when he most needs to be judged.

Yeh, right after the levees broke, I said (before all this flooding happened fully) I said, there would be the blame game. Its easy to throw blame around, and NOW, all the black leaders in the US are saying the goverment is racist, and if it were white people, it would be different. what utter SHIT.

as you said, instead of WASTING out time blaming, lets get off our asses and help the people. grr.

I just hope if Canada ever invades New York or Mexico ever invades Texas that it doesn't take 5 days to get at least a few thousand troops on the scene.

[ 09-02-2005, 10:10 PM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

Z, I couldn't agree more. People may really fry my butt for saying this but the race card has been played and that doesn't help a thing. The so called Rev. Al Sharpton was saying that Florida got preferential treatment because there were a lot of white people in Florida and that Jeb Bush was the president's brother. Hello?! If that isn't inflamatory and racist I don't know what is and, yes, I heard it with my own ears.

By the way, Congress in 1965 passed legislation to fix the levees in New Orleans because they knew this problem would one day occur. This legislation has been in place through the following administrations: Johnson (Democrat), Nixon (Republican), Ford (Republican), Carter (Democrat), Regan (Republican) 1st Bush (Republican), Clinton (Democrat), and now Bush 2 (Republican). And shamrock_uk, I don't want to pan over Bush. I hope that isn't how it comes across, but man this was a disaster waiting to happen for 40 years (and more). Now many people are starting to criticize the mayor and asking this tough question: Why didn't he authorize the use of the hundreds of school buses to get the people out. Good question.

Again, thanks for letting me rant. I think it is important to find where the problems lie and truly deal with them, but right now criticism of the degree we are speaking of isn't helping one bit.

I agree that this is a bad time to look for someone to blame.

At some point though, some degree of criticism is inevitable, as funding for projects to better equip New Orleans against exactly what happened dropped off in 2003 to help fund the war. That money was actually slated to be used in a number of projects in 2003-4. I'm not the one doing the criticism, since it's definitely not the time, but I am explaining why we will hear such criticism. I'm not sure even this will really matter in terms of preventing future disasters, because the nightmare scenario for New Orleans already happened. I believe a similar event could do the same for large parts of Houston, but I'm not sure of other cities in a similarly precarious place.