We The People...

I am tired of this: "Now is not the time for laying blame and finger pointing. It's time to focus on helping those affected by the hurricane." What a load of bullshit. As if examining the situation when all eyes are upon it somehow takes away from helping people. I think now, with the immediacy of corpses floating by on the tv screen every night, is precisely the right time, when people are willing to be brutal and angry and brilliant about it. What is misguided is the notion that the "blame" somehow lies with an elected official or a government agency. While I have strong opinions about what I think happened, having never been a mayor, a governor, a head of a government agency, a president, or anyone else directly involved in the situation, I can't say precisely who exactly fucked up and when. What I can do, however, is examine which part of the blame is mine. This happened in America as a result of a failure somewhere, which means that as an American I have some part of the blame. Even if it is just one two-hundred and fifty millionth of the blame, it's mine. Even if I've given money to relief efforts, even if I drove down to the gulf coast right now and helped clean up, part of the blame for what already happened is mine. And the president's. And the head of FEMA. And my mom, and some guy in Nevada I've never met, and the person who delivers my mail, and everyone at Fox news and CNN and Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh and Scott's high school principal, it's everyone. Our politics and our government are a reflection of our priorities -all of us, voters or not- so I say if some one wants to blame the government, good for them, as long as they recognize that they ARE the government.

Likewise, charging that the governement and everything that comprises it is racist and classist is just plain stupid, because overt racism is for the most part taboo in this country and allegations like that put people on the defensive. "That's ridiculous," people will say. "I'm not racist. I think that everyone deserves a fair shot." (Not to mention all of the people who are pretty damn poor and pretty damn patriotic.) The problem isn't racism itself, the problem is that it has become so taboo that otherwise intelligent, kind, and introspective people are unwilling to examine the seeds of it in themselves. Racism simply is not something that decent people DO, so charges of it will always appear to come from extremists, or people with an "agenda." The reality is that it is the taboo of racism and its affiliated classism that keeps it bubbling far below the surface in this country. The threats on equal treatment aren't coming from the guys in white hoods marching down main street, nor are they coming from the exploitative practices of the much malligned "big business." The threat comes from basically good, moral people who are unwilling to investigate the assumptions that deep, deep down that some people matter a little bit less. And the suspicion that those who have acheived and accumulated have been able to do so because they are just a little bit better, somehow.

The most extraordinary and conscientious people I've met in my life readily admit that of course they are prejudiced in some way, and they are working on it.

So, as far as laying blame and politics, and that bullshit, really, now is the perfect time to be doing that. Suffering connects us to people who aren't like us, because suffering is suffering, no matter who is doing it. It is human-ness laid bare. It forces us to examine what we take for granted. Examining who bears responsibility now, when people are raw and bare and uncomfortable is the only way to move forward as a country and as humans. I say blame away. Blame government, blame the people who didn't evacuate, blame god, blame global warming. Blame liberals, blame conservatives, blame big business, blame the media, and the mayor, and the war and blame me while you're at it because it is one two-hundred and fifty millionth my fault. And one two-hundred and fifty millionth my mom's fault, and Scott, and his parents, and the guy who delivers the mail, and so on. I wonder what would happen if, say, a couple of people I know well were willing to take the blame with me. What would happen if I could get two other people with me to write editorials and letters to editors and letters to the president and god, and buy billboard space and air time, just to accept responsibilty. To say publicly:

We the undersigned accept three two-hundred and fifty millionths of the responsibility for the suffering that has, and will continue to occur along the Gulf Coast. We also accept three two-hundred and fifty millionths of the responsibilty for other preventable suffering occurring recently, currently, and in the near future in the United States. It's our fault, and we're really, really sorry. Please forgive us. We'll try harder, starting now. Thank you for your patience.

Oh, the Humanity.

In high school, when I was thrust into journalism classes because of my ability to put a sentence together, I was bored and aggravated. "I don't want to be a journalist," I would tell people. "I'm not that kind of writer." I had no interest in dispassionately listing the facts of an event, without opinion or emotion. It's not that I didn't see the value of it. I did and still do, now more than ever.

Another lifetime later, I've come to understand not only the value of good journalism, but the emotional and mental challenge of it. What I didn't understand then was that reporting the facts and only the facts is not the domain of the emotionally tepid. The reality is that removing oneself from a situation requires tremendous mental agility and self-knowledge. Recognizing one's own bias, whether overt or a faint pulse deep below the surface of conscious thought is not for the feint of heart. It is exhausting work.

Maybe that's why, for me and I'm sure many others, old-time, hard core journalism brings to mind two iconic images: the fast talking who-what-when-where-why guys in hats and trenchcoats, and the sound of roaring flames in the background of a voice saying, "oh, the humanity!"

"Oh, the humanity!" has become and remains a part of the cultural lexicon, I think, not because it was a brilliant description of a zephyr conflagration, but because it was the moment at which a situation became so awful that the characteristically impassive journalist broke character and cried out.

Where did that go, that commitment to dispassionate journalism so fierce that just one passionate outcry became iconic? I finally understand, really understand, the importance of good journalism. Not just news, but real journalism. I would like to have, quite simply, the facts of events in the world so that I can decide what I think of them all by myself. I get that no one can be completely unaffected, but could some one maybe try?

Sadly, I don't think that I can rely on any network or major newspaper or magazine to do this anytime soon. Media - darned near all media- rely on advertising to keep themselves running. Advertisers are going to pay to advertise only in media they can be sure will reach the right audience for their product. Which means that to some degree, the only way for media outlets to survive is to have a definable audience. And when you have a definable audience that you need to maintain to survive, the what and how of your reporting is going to become more and narrow. Ultimately, what the media thinks their audience wants to hear becomes the news, which effects what is even considered news in the first place, which effects the opinion of the audience, which the media needs to sustain itself, and this circle begins to spin faster and faster until it forms a vacuum in which the truth is sucked away irretrievably.

Public radio isn't off the hook either. They rely on sponsors, some corporate, lots of individuals. But they still rely on them. And they won't get them to fork over the dough if they're not listening. They won't be listening unless what they hear is interesting to them. Whoosh.

This all occurs to me now because watching people suffer from afar, making sense of it as best I can and deciding what to do about it is difficult enough without having to worry about how I'm being manipulated in the presentation of the information, or how the information is being manipulated in its presentation to me - intentionally or not. The people who create and deploy advertising aren't stupid; they know exactly who they're reaching when they choose to spend their money with CNN or Fox or MSNBC, or when they sponsor NPR. It is intensely disturbing to me that I'm getting my information from people who are trying to sell me hemorrhoid cream and a GMC. Oh, the humanity.

Flooding

This is an excuse to lay blame? This is somehow disloyal and unreasonably demanding? Bullshit. For one thing, this is perhaps the first time I can ever remember that I have wanted to hear from the president, whoever he is. Where is this guy? I mean, I'm glad he finally got himself there, but where IS he? I know damn well that by Wednesday night, Clinton, Bush one, probably Reagan, and certainly Carter would have been right there on every network, right in the middle of prime time, calmly and solemnly speaking to all of us on the outside, with the hope that the message would get to those on the inside. Step up and be a leader.

And my anger at our government for the way this is being handled has nothing to do with CNN, or my voting history. My government is telling me about all of the problems they are having, and that I should just be patient as I watch people die. I'm tired of hearing this bullshit about how they didn't expect the storm to be this strong or the communication to be this difficult. FEMA didn't expect this? Are you shitting me? It's their JOB to expect this. I pay taxes for them to expect this. I choose to contribute to the economy of the biggest fucking bullseye on the planet partly because I expect that a place that is a known target is actually going to be quite well protected by the juggernaut of the American government, with the military at its call. But that aside, is it really appropriate to ask for my patience when I'm watching people die before my very eyes and there is nothing, NOTHING, I can do about it. Jesus. At least in the hours and days after 9/11 when I found myself unable to step away from the TV everyone was already dead.