In today’s Huffington Post, writer/editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes about Hurricane Katrina:
Like all Americans I have been horrified watching the destruction wrought on New Orleans by this natural disaster. And I suppose like others who share the name Katrina, it has been eerie hearing and reading my name all over the news. But when Fox News started calling the hurricane, Killer Katrina, I started praying some rightwing idiot wouldn’t stoop so low as to personalize or politicize all of this human suffering.
I found this statement a little odd. First of all, I doubt that this well-known liberal editor of the Nation was home watching Fox News. Even if she were, why is she assuming that someone would personalize this human suffering? Because the hurricane is called Katrina? And her name is Katrina? Right off the back, I know that this is someone with a big ego.
Of course, someone with a bigger ego, Rush Limbaugh, actually did stupidly call the storm Hurricane Katrina Vanden Heuvel and warned his listeners that the left would use this tragedy against the right.
Katrina Van Heuvel rightly takes Limbaugh to task, saying that this is no time for conservatives to use this tragedy as a political tool.
Of course, in the same Huffington Post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes an article practically blaming the Republicans for energy policies that caused the hurricane.
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2….This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.
Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and–now–Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.
Can we at least wait until the LOOTING STOPS before we get into politics over this?
Tatyana — I’m finding the discussion between ACG and you very intriguing, mostly because you both represent my own contraditory feeling about the whole situation: the anger at the people who exploit the situation and the guilt about how these same people seem to have so little in their lives — and show no pride or connection to their own home city.
I guess Sophia wasn’t able to totally stamp out that liberal Jewish guilt…
Neilochka, you read my thoughts: I was just thinking if Sophia hasn’t succeded with wiping out socialism from your brains in 7 yrs, what could be expected from a comment thread?
As much as I hated what Robert Kennedy Jr. said as a partisan speaker at the wrong time, there does seem to be some experts who think that this disaster was preventable if not for some bad governmental decisions by both parties:
http://tinyurl.com/7kpt9
Also, this NY Times editorial says that if American history is any indication of what’s to come after a disaster of this magnitude, it’s a lot of infighting and soul-searching.
http://tinyurl.com/8loy4
Right back at’ya, what with the links on the subject (Ben H.)
List of charities, from Jack.
http://tinyurl.com/cjvgc
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If there had not been a big political fuss about Federal government incompetence right after the hurricane that I don’t think we would be seeing anything like the response we have seen, which FINALLY managed to effectively evacuate people and get some aid in. It is not unproductive to criticize government for doing a lousy job. In a democratic system it is often the most productive thing you can do.
Maybe, but I think it was the cable newscasts that really drove the embarrassment home. When you have the anchors on FOX news playing up the incompetence of the government, you know things are bad.
With this news that FEMA’s Michael Brown’s main experience for the job was a a horse show judge, and got his latest job mostly because of a college buddy with the Bush Administration — it makes my prior post about Jay McGraw’s nepotism with daddy Dr. Phil look pretty unimportant.