Utterly shocked, again

[louiselux]

Checking americablog this morning and this stopped my heart: Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith are reporting that the authorities have locked everyone in the convention center with no escape, and a checkpoint is stopping people from leaving New Orleans.

Oh my god. The video of their Fox news report from inside the Superdome is hosted on crooks and liars - it's harrowing. From what I understand it's also shocking that it's *Geraldo* and on Fox news, too. After the crying and the ranting, the anchor had the gall to say to one of them 'but let's get a perspective on this', to the reply 'this *is* the perspective'.

eta: Guardsmen halt evacuation at Superdome - also leave me pretty much speechless. A funny/terrible quote from someone still in there: "I don't want to go to no Astrodome. I've been domed almost to death."

Comments

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Point taken about Rivera - but it's probably better that he did it than not and the surely reasons why he did it are secondary, as long as the point got across.

Can Bush come back from this, do you think? As some journo over here said, he's got a tin ear when it comes to judging the right thing to say.

[fenris_wolf0]

Point taken about Rivera - but it's probably better that he did it than not and the surely reasons why he did it are secondary, as long as the point got across.
You make a very good point, though the universally reviled persona of Rivera makes this a bit doubtful.

Can Bush come back from this? Of course he can: the media machine over here a pretty strong and efficient one and I have seen an awful lot of comments to the effect that anyway all these people in New Orleans are criminals, lazy, little better than animals and moreover they are black. Bush cannot be blamed for a natural catastrophy or the fact that New Orleans was stupidly built below sea level, the local officials are corrupt and the ones to blame, American taxpayers are sick and tired of subsidizing those good-for-nothing people living in swamps down there and so on and so forth. (*)

I never, ever, thought I would see such comments in my life, and from so many. And the debate is not helped by the rabid fanaticism of the people who disagree with that type of point of view (I would use a stronger word, but stuff like this leaves me wordless). I feel like saying 'please stop being on my side, you are making the rest of us look bad'.

The acrimony levels being reached are making me fear for the future of Western civilization and I am hardly exaggerating.

Remember, this is an administration which seems to be weathering not just the completely absurd Iraqi situation, but also several major scandals such as Karl Rove committing high treason, being nailed for it and still getting away scot free (I expect him to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor any day now). Karl Rove: one of Bush's 'eminence grises'. The very same one Bush senior fired for babbling to the press in an inacceptable fashion -through the same journalist- several years before.

However, I am hoping that what is going on will wake up America to the real, material consequences of this type of ideology.

Note:
(*) I am not denying that taken individually some of these assertions may be correct, only that they have absolutely no relevance that I can see to the current events.