The BBC News front page.
You can’t write a pit thread entitled, “Number of dead in hurricane vs. number of dead in Iraq today”, throw up a couple of links, cite body counts, point out the irony of what you perceive as an ‘us and them’ lack of equivelancy in disaster reporting, and then make a lame, C.Y.A. ‘it’s not political’ disclaimer.
Whether you like it or not, just because attempted to avoid posting a duck, doesn’t mean it isn’t quacking. Over the years there have been hundreds of similar ‘comparison-type’ threads (i.e. ‘The media on reports about pretty blonde girls disappearing’ or ‘Why does the UN ignore the carnage in Africa’ two name just two). Even though the authors of such threads may wish to avoid being political, those sentiments, by their very nature, are political.
??? Katrina and the stampeded aren’t even CLOSE.
Not only will the death count eventually surpass the Iraqi stampede by thousands, but 1,000,000 people are left with NOTHING. Thousands of people are still stranded The destruction is just enormous. What’s left of NO is now a cesspool. The heartbreak is just beginning. You’ve got to be kidding me.
And it’s human nature like others have said. And there NOTHING wrong with that.
**samclem **
Do you accept the explanations given above?
You’ve only responded to the personal attacks against you but many of us have provide sound reasons & opinions to answer your questions.
Another reason why this is engrossing and traumatic for some of us, beyond any immediate personal connections, is that a lot of us live along the same coastline. We got grazed by a couple of hurricanes last year and narrowly missed by a couple others. Katrina headed west and took us out of the running early, but had some personal impact when it crossed our state south of here before turning into the real monster she finally was. I live in the shadows of these things for six months of the year. I have practically no fear of being trampled by a panic at a religious ceremony.
That doesn’t mean I don’t feel for the families in Iraq that lost their loved ones. I feel for them. It’s just not as immediate and more with sympathy than empathy.
Sometimes it isn’t what happens to you, it’s when it happens to you. Normally the governor of a large state getting shot would be the major story of the day, but John Connally wasn’t getting a whole lot of attention in November of 1963. If the Iraqi stampede had happened a week ago, it would have been bigger. But it had the misfortune of being at the same time as the greatest natural disaster in US history.
I have looked all over for a cite for that and can’t find one. When you find one would you shoot it in here?
My brother told me he saw a prediction on MSNBC of 40,000-60,000 deaths and I thought he was making it up, or had misunderstood.
This point applies to anyone living on the Eastern Seaboard as well as the Gulf Coast. Hurricanes have wreaked havoc all the way up the Atlantic coast. One monster was the 1938 hurricane. More info on hurricane landfalls between Virginia and Massachusetts can be found here.
So, yeh, this hits home to anyone living on or near the coast.
Exactly- I live in Maryland, which is pretty damned far away from New Orleans… but I remember going without power for two freaking weeks following Isabella and hearing the radio reports of the flooding throughout Oldtown Alexandria.
There but for the grace of God.
Apropos of nothing much, last night I heard a local newsairhead say that Katrina was “One of the worst natural disasters of our lifetimes.”
I spent a few minutes looking for a brick to bounce off his skull, but by the time I found one, the moment had passed.
Yeh. I was a kid when two hurricanes hit Massachusetts in the 1950s, and I remember how frantic with worry my mother was for days afterward, since my father was a telephone lineman and was spending long hard hours dodging downed power lines to restore telephone service. There were huge trees lying like pick-up-sticks all over the place.
Now I live in a seacoast town, only a couple of miles from the shore. It’s north of Boston, so not as likely to take as big a hit as Cape Cod and the south coast of the state would, but if a Category 3, say, rolled over us, we’d be fucked.
Contemplating the Boston area taking anywhere near the kind of hit the Gulf Coast has is just horrifying. Especially because it will happen some day.
You are right, Something just ain’t right
That something is YOU
You are having a problem with a local disaster affecting millions of our friends and relatives gets more news coverage?
Geez you must have been befuddled by 9/11- can see you going DUH everytime its mentioned again
(just goes to show any dipstick can be a Mod)
sorry to all the non dipstick mods
What did you edit, samclem?
Why dont you come down with me http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=332870
would love your help
I’ll be happy to, if I see/hear it again. I was wondering if the guy was either talking out his ass or letting something slip that he meant to keep quiet, because I haven’t heard it anywhere else either. I was walking through the living room yesterday, and he quoted that figure. It nearly floored me.
If I didn’t have joint custody of a 12 year old and a 14 year old , I just might have done that. You’re the kind of person I wish I could be more like. Thank God for people like you. I gave blood Sunday morning, not that it had anything to do with NO. I just give blood.
Yes, I accept the explanations. Hell, I mostly knew this. I’m sorry if my OP wasn’t as tightly written as it could have been.
What I said was that the Iraqi disaster would be but a blip on MY radar. Of course I understand about the closeness of the disaster in NO. ( But you don’t understand–, “they’re shooting at ME!”) 
You and others are right. I wish now I had linked to a ferry capsizing in the Java Sea with all 1500 pilgrims lost. No one would have linked my post to politics. Again, I had NO political motive. Iraq just happened to be the disaster of the day. And I was berating myself for caring for only a moment about a thousand dead so far away, but I’ll be caring about the number of dead in NO for weeks to come.
No, I wasn’t comparing the lack of news coverage about the disaster in Iraq. I was musing about how the Iraq incident would be gone from my mind the next day. New Orleans won’t. It won’t be gone for weeks, months. Just the irony.
Fortunately, not just any dipstick can be a mod. They’re taking applications. Your move.
Mudane things. Spelling, if you must know.
Last edited tag coming soon?
And, if anyone else needs to know why I can’t just hop back in my thread, I go to work at 7am, and get home at 7pm. I try to access the board as quickly as possible, first responding to board matters in my capacity as a mod. Then I can be a civilian. I have NO internet access during the day.
It won’t be gone in part because of the long-term ramifications for the whole country. Just this afternoon I heard a discussion on NPR about the impact on shipping, for example. It’s harvest time for a number of crops in the Midwest, barges are loaded and heading down the Mississippi, and where are they headed to transship their caroges? The Port of New Orleans. Ocean-going ships are en route to the port with cargos.*
That info is Googled from this site, GlobalSecurity.org, which also notes prophetically:
*Such as coffee. Don’t be surprised if the cost of a cuppa joe goes up.