Comparing and Contrasting Katrina

July 2011
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Comparing and Contrasting Katrina

15 July 2011

George Rebane

In the last week I received from four correspondents the following as a forwarded email. So I suppose it is making the rounds in at least the conservative circles. The important points it raises are the sum and stuff of what is discussed on RR. No matter how you look at them, the conclusion emerges that culture counts. I include the somewhat inflammatory conclusions. The broadcast media does not want to touch this kind of a discussion. Here is the body of the email –

After Katrina, the media blamed the lack of response on the Bush administration’s dislike of black people.

Can we then conclude from the lack of media coverage and response by the Obama administration that Obama doesn’t like white people?

Where are the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and North Dakota and helping the folks affected by the floods? Where is good old Michael Moore?

Why is the media NOT asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn’t solved this problem? ……Asking where are the FEMA trucks and trailers and food services?

Why isn’t the Federal government moving Iowa people into free hotels in Chicago and Minneapolis ?

When will Spike Lee say that the Federal government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines ?

Where are Sean Penn, Bono, and the Dixie Chicks?

Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes, cases of beer and television sets?

When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a ‘vanilla’ Iowa … because that’s what God wants?

Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of shootings at rescuers, of rapes and murder?

Where are all the people screaming that Barack Obama hates white, rural people? My God, where are Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Oprah, and Ray Coniff Jr?

How come you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again? Where are the gov’t. bail out vouchers? The government debit cards?

More people died in these floods than from Katrina..how come the media doesn’t report that?!!!!! There must be one hell of a big difference between the value of the people of Iowa and value of the people of Louisiana.

HERE’S THE REAL TRUTH: THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE MEDIA, AND SOON TO BE GOV’T. CONTROL OF INTERNET, CELL PHONES, RADIO AND ALL COMMUNICATION AS WELL AS THE PRESENT NETWORK NEWS ON TV.

WAKE UP, AMERICANS… WHO EVER CONTROLS THE MEDIA CONTROLS THE COUNTRY! THIS IS ONLY ONE OF THE “ARMS” THAT IS NOW IN PLACE TO ACCOMPLISH THE TAKE OVER OF YOUR COUNTRY!

Posted in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Culture Comments, Current Affairs, Our Country

19 responses to “Comparing and Contrasting Katrina”

Ryan Mount

15 July 2011

A couple of things:
1) It’s very hard to take someone seriously who uses the “Wake up!” cliché as a call to action. It’s a trope that seems more appropriate in a 10th Grade essay. Not to mention the use of ALL CAPS, which is extraordinarily annoying and distracting.
2) The writer is indeed right regarding thought control in a Democracy and the role of media in that process. His/her is aim is true, but s/he totally misses the mark. In a (relative) Democracy such as ours, you do not have the overt control over propaganda that one would have, let’s say, in a totalitarian government. So you need to convince the electorate, literally manufacture consensus, via the media. You need more Axe body Wash, the Government is your friend. War is Peace. Etc.
It’s really hard to take the writer seriously when they are paraphrasing Kanye West’s ridiculous assertion that George Bush hated Black people. And anyone who agrees with that is equally ridiculous, but entertaining.
The real reason Katrina had more media traction is that it was more popular to cover. More sensational. And in many cases, played into our absurd and frankly bigoted images of Black people. And more importantly, Katrina’s spectacle contributed to higher corporate ad revenues. And in case you haven’t noticed, all of the major media companies are in the hands of a few multinational corporations who have no interest in truth. Or at least, it’s an afterthought following profit.

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Todd Juvinall

15 July 2011

The left has a ready made set of propaganda in place for any calamity that they can blame on any conservative. During Katrina they had a Bush bash on the air within minutes. Same with 9/11. Then when the state run media (except FOX) got their talking points from the DNC and leftwing allegations, they of course send it out and beat it to death by repetition. Even though Bush’s people were there and then 120 billion sent, the media still bashed. What one has to simply do is look at the lack of bashing of the Louisiana Governor (a democrat woman) and the New Orleans Mayor Nagin (a black male democrat) and you will see the template of allegation against Bush (white male with power) was met. Rather than the media simply reporting the tragedy they look to set blame by race (totally ridiculous of course). The lack of equal response of the lamestream media (and the leftwingnuts hypocrites) on the Mississippi floods is the floods do not fit there template worldview of who has the power and since Jessee Jackson said blacks, women and other minorities cannot be racist because they don’t have the power of the white people, they cannot be held to the same responsibility in racial issues. I am truly ashamed of the media because when they respond to things with racial allegations they diminish the country. I know many local folks who volunteered to go to New Orleans amd Mississippi through their churches and they could care less if those they helped were black or white.

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Douglas Keachie

15 July 2011

“More people died in these floods than from Katrina..how come the media doesn’t report that?!!!!! There must be one hell of a big difference between the value of the people of Iowa and value of the people of Louisiana.”
Have you fact checked this? Without looking up anything, I seem to recall and estimate of 2,000 dead in New Orleans, and rather well into the billions in damages to property, not crops, which will benefit from the fresh soil.
Are the events really comparable?

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Douglas Keachie

15 July 2011

This article in the NY Times in Dec 2005 shows more than 1,700 dead.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hurricane_katrina/index.html

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Ryan Mount

15 July 2011

The media gets its marching orders for their Board of Directors and to some extent, their largest and most powerful shareholders. It’s not really that complicated. For example:
– General Electric owns NBC-Universal.
– GE makes a lot of things that blow up people in other parts of the world. They make a lot of money on government contracts. Over 10 billion, with a “B” since 2006.
– GE wants to make sure that there’s a lot of defense spending. So how might they encourage that? Hmmmnn. I wonder?
So what does this have to do with Katrina? Well, everything. It was a freak show that scared the crap out of us. And when we’re scared and frightened we buy more insurance, car seats for the kids, and we’re probably more susceptible to invade other places that have bad people. GE gets more ad revenue from Unilever for Axe Body wash commercials, and more government contacts for the F404 engine used on the F/A-18. ($641 million, BTW in 2008 alone, in case you were wondering.)
And that’s why the above email misses the mark so completely, yet in spirit is correct. The writer has a sense of what’s wrong in our country, but has been distracted by the talking points from the mouthpieces in our culture whom are neither Liberal nor Conservative but are interested only in power and wealth and frankly hegemony.

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George Rebane

15 July 2011

Good point DougK, thanks. I can’t find a corroboration for more than 1,700 dead from the Great Plains floods. The death toll seems to be below 100 from the disparate reports. Significantly more if the tornados are added in.
According to the author, the ‘compare and contrast’ here is primarily between what the response of the the New Orleans community was to a disaster in the presence of thin to no law enforcement (most of the first person accounts of just what happened in the SuperDome have never been published), to how multiple communities responded to the floods and related tornados.

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Douglas Keachie

15 July 2011

On the Wikipedia list of disasters, tornadoes killed about 650 this spring, and floods are not even mentioned as a cause of death. Tornadoes good for 10 to 15 billion in damage, Katrina hits 80 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_disasters_by_death_toll
There is of course no connection between this extreme weather and any theories about Global HVAC.

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Mikey McD

15 July 2011

Departments (think FEMA in this case and HUD, D of Education and Energy as additional examples) are proselytized by politicians for political gain; and only exist for such a purpose. Such agencies have absolutely zero accountability to ‘the people.’ The media (accepted as left leaning) guides our focus on or off of said departments as it drives their agendas (ideology) and profits.

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Steve Enos

15 July 2011

George, why did you post this false “story”. It’s so far from the truth that it should be used to line bird cages.
The basis claim that “More people died in these floods than from Katrina..how come the media doesn’t report that?!!!!!” is a totally false… LIE!
The answer as to why the media didn’t report more people killed in the floods than from Katrina is simple… it didn’t happen!
George, do you have any standards here?

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George Rebane

15 July 2011

SteveE, see my 1249PM comment. Re “… any standards here?” None that you’d approve of.

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Paul Emery

15 July 2011

Do you include Fox in you’re “lame stream media” collection? Was their coverage more “balanced” ?
A flood in New Orleans is a much sexier story than a flood in Iowa and North Dakota. End of story.

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George Rebane

15 July 2011

Nah, Fox News just covered the floods as the human and economic tragedy that it was (is). They didn’t draw any cross-cultural conclusions with respect of New Orleans.

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Steve Enos

15 July 2011

George… your standards should include facts vs. ranting fiction that is easy to check.

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Scott Obermuller

15 July 2011

Some of the facts about Katrina that folks don’t want to talk about. It was totally predictable and the city/area had days to get ready. The city of New Orleans had all of the available infrastructure to evacuate everyone from the city but failed to do so. The governor of Louisiana failed to call in fed help in a timely manner as per required by law. The delay was blamed on Bush, but it was the governor that failed to act. A lot of the citizens left after the flooding did, in fact, engage in looting to obtain items that had nothing to do with survival. The liberal democrats running the city prior to Katrina had no plan of any kind to help the city with what was obviously something that would occur. Blaming Bush was the most important thing the lame stream media cared about. I heard a talk given by a FEMA pastor who was in the dome after the storm and the horrific animalistic actions by many that were in the dome were beyond the pale.

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stevenfrisch

16 July 2011

Face it, the media covered Katrina because the majority of the victims were black, and are ignoring the current flooding because the majority of the victims are white. It is just another example of how white middle class Americans are discriminated against!

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Paul Emery

16 July 2011

So Fox good, everyone else lame

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Brad Croul

16 July 2011

The path of a hurricane cannot be precisely predicted. The path of a river is well known.
Advance warning of an impending hurricane might be given in hours or days. Advance warning of the flood stage of a river might be predicted weeks in advance.
This email forward/propaganda is what we have come to expect from the “Great Divide” instigators.

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Steve Enos

18 July 2011

Rant, rant, rant… “lack of media coverage”… ” WHO EVER CONTROLS THE MEDIA CONTROLS THE COUNTRY”
What a surprise that this blog and other hard right blogs have failed to post one word about Murdock and what his mega news and media machine has been up to and what they are getting caught doing.

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Todd Juvinall

18 July 2011

Look out George, Enos is posting this on everyone’s blog.

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