Brooks Gets It Right
I think it is a huge reaction we are about to see. I mean, first of all, they violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn't happen; it's like leaving wounded on the battlefield.
[...]
This is -- first of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions.Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years -- this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.
We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.
And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the 70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of it.
[...]
...when 9/11 happened Giuliani was right there and just as a public presence, forceful -- no public presence like that now. So you have had a surge of strength, people felt good about the country even though we had been hit on 9/11.
Now we've been hit again in a different way; people feel lousy; people feel ashamed and part of that is because of the public presentation. In part that is because of the failure of Bush to understand immediately the shame people felt.
Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his politics quite often.
Shame, anger, sadness, fear - I never knew what it felt like to experience all these emotions at once - until now.
posted by Marcus at 9:59 PM Permalink
2 Comments:
I saw the News Hour too, and while Brooks has always been one of the most thoughtful of the war-monger media pundits, he still hasn't made the connection between the disaster of the war and its direct impact in limiting our inability to deal with the disaster of Katrina.
Meanwhile, Cheney remains safely on vacation in Wyoming - just like, apparently, all the top administration officials for days after the disaster, and Hastert has suggested that New Orleans might not be worth rebuilding
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/omigod-dick-cheney-has-been-on.html
Although it certainly took long enough (and is still "watered-down" with reports of criminal activity ie looting), the media has reported on the gov't's inactivity with suprising frequency.
It's starting to make the right's constant cries of "liberal media" look less ridiculous.
It's still ridiculous though.
And it just goes to show that, given enough attention, the media will latch onto anything. It's just that this time it's actually newsworthy.
Post a Comment
<< Home