Thanks for this. It seems to me like the television coverage (especially on Fox) contains a fundamentally racist subtext. Black people (and only black people) are being shown running around with bags of looted groceries and/or electronics while the news anchors shake their heads and cluck with disapproval. They don’t say anything about race but it practically screams out just from the images. Look at all those ________'s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down from hard working white people.
I’m sure a lot of people will tell me I’m imagining it, but I don’t believe I am.
This is your answer? Do you think it’s that simplistic? Even if the family ignored eveacuation orders for no good reason does that mean the children (and let’s ad a baby, what the hell) should have to suffer for the decisions of their parents?
You can save a baby or you can save a frozen turkey. What do you choose?
Well, then, it’s a good thing you aren’t in charge of disaster planning.
(Ellipses added to allow the reader to plug in an item that correctly reflects the issue of opportunistic looting, as distinguished from survival scavenging.)
I’d make a rational determination of how much difference a 10-second delay in addressing the former would make, and then address the latter, or not, accordingly.
You’re imagining it. Especially when you consider that most of the cable news footage of looters seems to be coming from a common feed. I’m watching the exact same helicopter shots on Fox and on CNN. But a nice try, nonetheless.
Do you think that the news choppers circle around twidling their dicks until the white looters get out of the shot so that they can get only shots of black looters?
Or maybe, just maybe, the majority of the looters might, just might, happen to be black? Like, you know, a large proportion of the people who live there are?
Well it wouldn’t be a ten-second delay because there’s hundreds of people with frozen turkeys (and if you don’t like “turkeys” change them to “Gamecubes”). If you decided that it was more important to fly around killing looters in the street (nice moral code you’ve got there, by the way. It must be nice to go through life unencumbered by a conscience) before you rescued any babies all the babaies would die.
Nope. Nice try but no sale. The problem at the hospital involved the safety of people inside, not the simple loss of damaged merchandise from totalled stores. You don’t get to kill people for stealing TVs. That’s not how it works in civilized societies.
I am reminded of a classic example of the difference between rote “book learning” and common sense: “If there are six birds on a fence and you shoot one, how many birds will be on the fence afterwards?”
Actually, if you want the truth, I’ve heard that Fox has rented out the water tank used to film Titanic , constructed a big set of New Orleans in it and hired black actors to pretend to be looters. This way the evil right-wing Fox execs can ensure that no white looters accidentally appear in any of their shots. :rolleyes:
Yes, the majority population is black. The racism isn’t in the pictures alone but the commentary which not only dehumanizes the people doing it and carictures all of them as subhuman scum, but in the fact that they never TELL you News Orleans is majority black. They leave an impression that only black people are doing it because they don’t tell you that only black people live in those neighborhoods. Or to put it another way, they’re leaving an impression that white people are choosing not to do it simply by refraining to tell you that there aren’t white people.
[CNN anchorman]
We would like to mention that the reason you only see black people in these shots of looters is that only black people live here. Rest assured, if any white people lived here, they would also be breaking into stores and looting.
[/CNN anchorman]
Is that what you expect?
(Not true anyway, I’ve seen white people on camera too.)