Victor Davis Hanson is commenting on Hurricane Katrina and European reaction , in words that seem to reflect the sentiments of many bloggers, from what I have seen:
More recently, Hurricane Katrina was often offered as proof of American environmental, class and racial chaos. Yet by any fair token, we are recovering pretty well. A mammoth hurricane overwhelmed a city below sea level, on a stormy coast, positioned on a huge river delta and beneath a vast lake. Yet in an August 2003 heat wave, 15,000 French citizens — far more than were lost in New Orleans — died, while a distracted nation hit the beaches for their promised state-subsidized vacations.
Let’s start with the chaos: It can hardly be denied that local and state authorities badly screwed up in their response, or rather non-response to Katrina, nor that the defenses New Orleans had against flooding were insufficient. The American media also did their best to exaggerate a bad situation. So of course the foreign media picked up on this and passed it on their readers and viewers, along with some spin of their own; reaction American MSM to over-hyped foreign disasters hasn’t been different in the past. Fine, this kind of coverage has hurt Hanson’s patriotic feelings, but there is no call to paint Europe with such a broad brush, just because media outlets over here were parroting their American counterparts’ hyperbole. Most people were horrified, and the gleeful responses Hanson is writing about were few and far between.
As to the racial aspect: If dark-skinned people are seen floundering in deep shit, the categorical imperative of polical correctness (so to speak) dictates the assumption that Whitey has pitched them in there head-first. And if the Whitey in Chief goes right ahead and affirms this assumption,
The task of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina is a chance to wipe out poverty and remnants of racial injustice, US President George W Bush has said.
He said those hit hardest by the hurricane were already impoverished because of years of discrimination.
“As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality,” Mr Bush said at a memorial service in Washington.
then there is no stopping people. Why, under these circumstances all those asskissing interviews on German TV with black musicians from New Orleans, with interviewers and interviewees agreeing that it all only could happen due to racism, were practically mandatory. It’s not as if many American commentators, and certainly none working in the mainstream media (nor for that matter, any who hope to ever work in them) had pointed out that in a city where blacks control city hall, the city administration, the school boards, the police force, and so on, white discrimination against black people probably isn’t the main problem – so why expect it from liberal and leftwing commentators abroad? Yes, the claim that American society is racist is false and outrageous, but those making it only have to repeat what they hear coming out of the United States over and over again. Instead of getting angry at foreigners it would be more productive to work at limiting the influence of domestic racial demagogues, and to avoid working into their hands, as the president did when he said what I quoted above.
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